Meeting Curfew Allegedly Caused Fatal Crash

A Dallas-area teenager lost his life in a car crash in late April.

According to the report, the teenager was speeding home to make his curfew and lost control while on a corner. One of the teenager’s friends in the article says that he wasn’t worried about getting into trouble but had to help on a ranch and do volunteer work the next day, and thus, wanted to make it home in time.
Curfews are almost universal for people under the age of 18. There are some cities where curfews are legally mandated (like Dallas), and there is sometimes controversy over these laws. When people are in too much of a rush, however, serious car accidents can occur. This applies to adults as much as it does to teenagers. There are some things that drivers should know about what they risk and what they really get out of driving in too much of a rush.

You don’t get there much faster.

One of the bitter ironies with the many people who are killed every year due to speeding is that speeding really wouldn’t have gotten them where they were going much faster than they would have had they been following the speed limit. In fact, traffic lights are oftentimes timed so that following the speed limit actually makes it faster to get through all of them.
Even if speeding does allow you to miss a few traffic lights, traffic lights usually only last a couple of minutes. Remember that the perception that traffic lights take forever to change is mainly psychological. When you’re waiting at the stoplight, time it next time. You’ll notice that it doesn’t take nearly as long as it seems and that waiting through a few red lights doesn’t add a significant amount to your drive time.

You cannot outdrive your car.

Even if you have a small, compact car, it probably goes faster than you can safely handle it. While most drivers think of themselves as capable of driving 10 or 15 miles over the speed limit safely, this is usually not the case. Corners are particularly dangerous in these cases, as you’ll only have limited time to react to losing control or to an obstacle that comes into sight only a fraction of a second before you have time to react.