Grieving family acts to aid young drivers
16.11.09
Although his graduation image hangs at Shawnee High School, Ryan Fitzpatrick never got to creep down the commencement aisle with his fellow seniors. He never made it to the prom. He will never play college football.
On April 26, less than mile from his Medford territory, Fitzpatrick was killed when he lost control of the SUV he was driving, possibly swerving to keep a deer. He had turned 18 just the month before.
Within days of his ruin, the grief-racked Fitzpatrick family went into action. They launched a scratch-raising campaign to buy driving simulators to help other young people fit out for the hazards of the road.
Shawnee now has two simulators, and a third is slated for delivery later this month. A fourth is planned. The contemplate is to raise money to buy simulators for Lenape Regional High Approach District's three other general schools.
"That's what we're trying to do," said Dan Fitzpatrick, Ryan's pop. "To keep any other family from going through this."
Motor-vehicle crashes are the outstanding cause of death for U.S. teenagers, according to the federal Centers for Illness Control and Prevention. In 2007, the most recent year for which statistics are convenient, more than 4,200 people ages 15 to 19 were killed in accidents, and approximately 400,000 were treated in hospital emergency rooms for crash-linked injuries.
Most states, including New Jersey and Pennsylvania, have some form of graduated licensing - known to abbreviate accidents involving young drivers. Next year in New Jersey, tougher new requirements for initiate drivers will go into effect, including greater limits on passengers and a channel decal identifying new drivers. Teen auto deaths in the Garden Phase decreased in 2008 for the third consecutive year.
In Pennsylvania, crashes and fatalities involving 16- and 17-year-old drivers have declined comprehensive since graduated licensing took effect in 1999.
But across the nation, youth driver training and adjustment vary greatly. And, in the face of budget constraints and past contradictory reports, many school districts over the last couple of decades have discontinued or predetermined driver education.
Out of this uneven landscape, families like the Fitzpatricks have become part of a sociability none would have chosen - one propelled by loss and the desire to channel grief into a higher intend: They have become advocates for better driver's ed.
In Georgia, for example, Alan Brown of Cartersville campaigned for the driver's knowledge-boosting Joshua's Law, named for his son who, at 17, was killed in a single-car bang in 2003. Among the law's provisions, a portion of the state's traffic violation fines is supposititious to go toward driver education. Some has been spent on simulators like the ones at Shawnee.
In New York, another facetiousmater, Penney Gentile of Cooperstown, whose son Chris, 18, died in a failure in 2007, and Lindsay Rowley, one of Chris' schoolmates, won passage of a bill to analysis driver's ed statewide. They also got legislative funding for simulators at Cooperstown Far up School.
"When a parent loses a child, they have to try to make some sagacity," said Van Flanigan, vice president of Virtual Driver Interactive (VDI), which manufactures the simulators that are at Shawnee and other schools. She has worked with several of the progenitrix advocates.
"I know of at least six or eight people who have made this their life's work, and I'm tried there are dozens and dozens," she said.
Simulators, of course, are no more than one aspect of driver education. They don't take the place of real driving. Yet while the technology hasn't been conclusively proven to belittle accidents, many road-safety experts advocate simulators to pirate prepare novice drivers.
Early this year, the National Highway Conveyance Safety Administration, along with good-driving organizations, released recommended driver-tutelage standards that included using simulators to enhance instruction.
Driver's ed in the 21st century, however, doesn't possess c visit cheap - $18,000 for a new model of the kind of simulator now at Shawnee.
Dan Fitzpatrick, who has an air-purification house, said VDI told him he could get a model used for demonstrations for $9,500.
Of course, the paper money had to be raised. A big boost came from the New Jersey Manufacturers Insurance Co., the family's insurer. The assembly gave $10,600 toward one of the first simulators. Altogether the fund has raised $30,000, but the Fitzpatricks have a way to go before they reach their end of simulators for all the Lenape Regional schools.
So far, the machines are going over big at Shawnee, where all sophomores take driver's ed but don't get approach practice. That was dropped several years ago due to fiscal constraints, according to boss Matthew Campbell.
One day last week, students used the simulators to habit obeying traffic signals, making turns, and driving in diversified conditions.
Jon Lashkevich, 16, tried snow driving.
"You can see how you slip, and the brakes don't work as easy," he said.
Chris Stegmuller, 15, sim-drove in the torrent and got a sense of driving under the influence of alcohol, including the police a halt.
"They put in crazy drivers, and you have to slow down and let people cross the circle," said Lindsay Dougherty, 15.
"Everything the machine is doing is installing solicitous habits," said Corey Jones, 16.
It won't even let students start driving if they haven't fastened their posteriors belts - something Dan Fitzpatrick said could have saved Ryan's life.
Patricia Fitzpatrick, a keep alive, said her son had had his driver's license less than six months. As it was, she made him wait a year from when he got his permit for that added maturation.
But the crash happened anyway. Dan Fitzpatrick said Ryan had just driven a bosom buddy home. The road markings indicated he might have been trying to avoid a deer, his paterfamilias said. The 1999 Ford Expedition, which the Fitzpatricks bought because they design there was safety in size, hit a tree, and Ryan was ejected.
The Shawnee community took the undoing hard. A popular student, Ryan was a defensive tackle on the football collaborate. He had been recruited to play for Delaware Valley College in Doylestown. His older confrere, Dan, 20, attends Drexel University.
The Fitzpatricks want contemporary and future Shawnee students to stay mindful of what happened to Ryan. Recently, commemorative plaques were installed on the simulators. On one is a bulletin from Dan and Patricia Fitzpatrick, titled "Remembering Ryan":
"If remembering what happened to Ryan helps you to establish f get on the right decisions when driving, then just maybe he will have helped to put aside your life."
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Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
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