St. Tammany News

Sept. 10, 1982. Denis Mitchell remembers it vividly. It's the day a telephone call changed his life forever.

Away on business, the motivational speaker and former television talk show host couldn't believe what he was hearing. At first there was the "cold, still silence" on the other end, then the revelation: His 5-year-old son was hit and killed by a drunk driver. "I knew they had to be lying. I was in denial," he told more than 100 parents at the first ever "Parent Focus on Safe Teen Driving" forum sponsored by St. Tammany Parish School Board. "I had to call my mom. She was the only one I knew that would tell me the truth."

Mitchell was the keynote speaker for the two-day forum, dedicated to involving parents to help curb teenage vehicle deaths. In 2004 a record 13 students perished.

With a quiver in his voice, tear in his eye and his son's picture plastered on big screens in the background, he told the story of how tears once consumed his life before he picked himself up to tour the country touting safe driving habits.

"All of my hope, all of my dreams were destroyed in an instant, the moment somebody chose to drink and drive," he said. "This keeps him alive."

His message was clear: parents need to be emotional charged and involved with teenagers to develop safe teenage driving habits.

Others agreed.

"We deal with teens every year," State Police Troop L spokesman Louis Calato said. "But we never deal with the parents. They are the ones that can make a big difference."

Calato was one of a six-person panel featuring Sheriff Jack Strain, Michael Dirmann, a parish School Board member and insurance expert, Stacey Mequet of the Youth Service Bureau, Drew Lehmann, executive director of PRIDE, and Dr. Todd Thomas, an associate professor of Emergency Management Medicine at Louisiana State University that studies accidents and prevention.

"Our children emulate us," Calato said to the audience of parents. "Unfortunately, if we can't educate you, its hard to educate the kids. If you don't wear a seatbelt, they won't."

A recent poll suggests the efforts seem to be working. One year ago, less than 60 percent of St. Tammany students surveyed said they wore a seatbelt. Revisited two weeks ago, the survey soared to above 90 percent, Calato said.

That statistic pleased Dirmann, an insurance specialist, who said 83 percent of teenage drivers will be involved in some sort of traffic accident before they turn 20.

"So to sit her and be naive and to say it's not going to happen to my child is wrong," he said. "The chances are it is going to happen."

Dirmann advocated progressive parenting, with parents encouraging children to call for a ride home when they've been drinking. Too many times kids are more fearful of their parents than they are of drinking and driving, he said.

"I guarantee you would rather wake up in the middle of the night and go get your child (from a party) than wake up in the middle of the night and go to a funeral home," he said.

Nationwide, 6,000 teenagers, two-thirds of whom are male, die in car accidents each year, with 450,000 injured and 27,000 requiring extended hospitalization, according to parentingteendrivers.com, a safe driving advocacy Web site. That number accounts for 14 percent of all motor vehicle deaths yearly.

The forum aims to reduce that number.

"We all have choices to make, and it's our responsibility as adults to steer our children on the roadway of life," said Denise Barns, senior supervisor of instruction and the panel's moderator.

Strain said parents all too often stick up for their children's driving habits, instilling a false belief of safety in teenage drivers.

Teenagers "have no fear or concern whatsoever because mom and dad will be on (law enforcement officials) tomorrow," Strain said. "That's got to change, folks. These are the men and women that drag your children out of their car when they die."

"All of us want to do something, but we need you to be involved," he said. "Talk to your children."