Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 16, 1995 TAG: 9501170095
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TODD JACKSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ROCKY MOUNT LENGTH: Medium
But it didn't surprise the students - Kris Wright, 16; John Sawyers, 17, and Raven Lawton, 17.
One reason: They've lost several classmates to car crashes in the past couple of years.
The most recent was Ishan Washington, a popular 17-year-old senior who was the son of the school's associate principal, George Washington.
Ishan Washington was killed Halloween night when he got out of the car in which he was a passenger after it hit another vehicle on U.S. 220 near Rocky Mount. Washington was struck by a third vehicle.
The chain-reaction crash involved five cars. State police said heavy fog triggered the crashes.
Washington's death shocked the school, the students said, and it still weighs on their minds.
But does it make them drive more cautiously?
Yes and no.
"I try not to think about it too much when I'm driving," said Sawyers, a senior and three-sport athlete who, along with Lawton, was a friend of Ishan Washington's.
"I have to drive by the spot where it happened just about every day, so I think about it," said Lawton, a senior who hopes to study mass communication at the University of North Carolina.
Sawyers, Lawton and Wright have a lot of time to think while driving, because, like many Franklin County students, it takes them about a half-hour to get to school.
Franklin, the state's fifth-largest county geographically, has one high school. It also has one of the largest enrollments in the region, with more than 2,000 students.
Bottom line: A lot of students have to travel long distances on secondary roads.
The students said they were excited when they first received their driver's licenses, but the long drive to school quickly made getting behind the wheel a regular, and ordinary, part of the day.
"And it's not just school," Wright said. "You've got to drive a long way on the weekend if you want to do anything. Most of my friends go to Roanoke."
That's an hour's drive for Wright, a junior who lives near Philpott Lake. He participates in theater and two sports.
And while there was no common link among the wrecks that killed 15 people in the county last year, county officials have singled out driver inattention as one of the biggest problems.
The students readily admit they make mental slips - leaning over to pick out a cassette tape or a CD, for example - but none of the three has been involved in an accident.
"There are times after ballgames when I leave the school and I get home at 12 or 1 o'clock in the morning," said Sawyers, who lives in the Sontag area. "I hate it. I'm tired and I get in my car, turn the heat on, and I've got to drive 30 minutes."
Said Wright, "I hate to drive at night by myself."
Wright and Lawton said they always wear a seat belt out of fear of what can happen. Sawyers said he doesn't wear his as much as he should.
"I wish my car had one of those kind that attach to the door," he said.
Discussing drinking and driving, another cause of several fatal wrecks in 1994, the students said many of their peers still do it.
"People know the roads, and they know where the police are likely to be," Sawyers said. "So they'll go around Windy Gap Mountain or some other way so they won't get caught. It might take them another hour, but that doesn't make a difference."
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB