DATE: Saturday, September 20, 1997          TAG: 9709200010

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B9   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion 

SOURCE: Kerry Dougherty 

                                            LENGTH:   76 lines

WE NEED A HOT LINE TO TATTLE ON TEEN DRIVERS VIRGINIA LEGISLATIVE OUGHT TO KEEP AN EYE ON THE SANTA CLARA "HOW'S MY DRIVING" PROGRAM.

Whenever my 8-year-old daughter tells me about all the fun she's having on the school bus, I cheerfully remind her that she ought to enjoy herself since she'll still be riding the bus until she graduates from high school.

To a third-grader that sounds fine. But I know that by the time she's a teen-ager she'll regard riding the school bus as being sentenced daily to a rolling yellow gulag.

Who cares?

Nothing annoys me more than looking at all the space dedicated to parking lots at local high schools. Acres and acres of land set aside to accommodate kids who could just as easily take the bus.

Arguments in favor of riding school buses are legion. Riding school buses instead of driving cars saves fuel and reduces pollution. Buses are safer than cars and, most important, bus drivers are better drivers than teens.

I know, I know, kids need cars because they work after school. The logic of that argument is completely fallacious, however, since most teen-agers work to pay for their cars, gas and insurance. Darn few of them are toiling away to help their families or save for college.

Friends of mine who had the sense to have their children earlier in life - in other words, they're raising teens now instead of grade-schoolers - look at me with bemusement when I vow that I will not buy my kids cars while they're in high school. Of course you will, they laugh. They won't be allowed to work during the week either. Right.

As far as I'm concerned, the job of teen-agers is to get an education.

You'll give in, my friends assure me.

Maybe. Maybe not.

If I do, I hope Virginia by then will have adopted a clever plan that is about to become law in California to crack down on the deadly driving habits of teen-agers. California legislators are considering a statewide hot line on which anyone could report teens driving in an unsafe manner.

If approved, every teen-age driver in California will be required to drive a car bearing a bumper sticker asking, in big letters, ``HOW'S MY DRIVING? In bigger letters: 1-888-KAR-SAFE.

Each bumper sticker will have a vehicle identification number and complaints will be registered on a data base. If someone calls the hot line to report a teen driver careening down the highway, the driver's parents are notified immediately.

The program kicks in this week in Santa Clara County and is being underwritten by Maxim Integrated Products of Sunnyvale. Not a dime of taxpayers' money is going to this program which Maxim sees as a public service.

A wonderful public service.

Too bad it wasn't in effect earlier this week in Spotsylvania County before a 17-year-old girl, who'd had her license for less than a month, slammed into a tree at more than 100 mph. She killed one of her three passengers - a 15-year-old boy and injured the others. She's been charged with involuntary manslaughter.

Every part of Hampton Roads has witnessed similar senseless carnage as a result of kids driving recklessly to and from schools. They're young, inexperienced and feeling immortal.

It's time for parents to curtail the practice of kids commuting to school in cars.

In addition, Virginia legislators ought to keep an eye on the Santa Clara ``How's My Driving'' program. If the program succeeds there, let's bring it here. In Hampton Roads alone there are thousands of adult drivers armed with car phones who would be ready at an instant's notice to tattle on teens. The hotine seems like an excellent way to deter young drivers from driving carelessly. And it might just help keep them alive.

Better yet, make them take the bus. MEMO: Ms. Dougherty is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot. ILLUSTRATION: Virginian-Pilot file photo by Mort Fryman.

[school buses]

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