I’m sitting down to write this post at the end of the Thanksgiving weekend. It is fair to say that two very different impressions struck me during the last week.

First, there was a tragic accident in East Coventry Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. A Honda SUV carrying six high school students (five of them from Pottsgrove High School) crossed the road, flipped, and struck an oncoming car. Two of the kids in the SUV passed away in this tragic accident. Others remain hospitalized now – almost one week after the accident. As the facts have come out, we’ve learned that the driver had received his driver’s license just three weeks earlier.

The accident reconstruction hasn’t been released, but I’m sure we’ll see that driver inexperience combined with the distraction caused by multiple teens in the car to cause this accident.  I’ve been lecturing and writing on this issue for a few years. I teach new drivers and their parents that each additional teen multiplies the risk for the new, inexperienced driver. We need to carefully examine how many teens should be allowed in  the car with a new driver. Right now the only limit under Pennsylvania law is that you can’t have more passengers than there are seatbelts. Contrast this with New Jersey where a new driver can’ t have more than one peer in the car.

There is legislation pending in Harrisburg to address this safety issue. Don’t hold your breath waiting for this law to change. Remember, this is a state that can’t even pass meaningful cell phone and text messaging bans. Until our law changes to protect teen drivers, this is a matter of parental responsibility. Don’t let your kids out the door until you know who will be in the car so you can monitor your teen driver’s safety – and the safety of your child as a passenger.

So what’s the good news? The good news is a bit of corporate responsibility and good citizenship that I like to acknowledge in my blog. I saw an ad by Verizon Wireless that is designed to make people stop texting and driving.  I was really glad to see this PR campaign by one of our country’s biggest wireless providers. The focus of the TV ad is a billboard that shows the new message being installed: “Please don’t text and drive” with the Verizon Wireless logo. Here’s a link to the TV spot:  http://aboutus.vzw.com/wirelessissues/DTAD%20TV%20Ad.mov . Hopefully, we’ll continue to see progress on this important safety issue. Thanks Verizon, I hope your competitors join you in this fight soon.