Utah Law Talk

4 Teens are dead following a single-car crash a few miles east of Soldier Summit in Utah on August 30, 2009. According to KSL news, a 13-year old Payson, Utah girl did not tell her parents she was leaving and snuck away in the middle of the night with three older boys to take a ride in the mountains. All the teenagers are from Utah County, Utah.

The Utah auto accident occurred on a country road called Emma Park Road. At around 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, the 16-year old driver attempted to speed around a turn. He skidded sideways toward a concrete barrier going 95 miles an hour. The crash was extremely violent, evidenced by the damage done to the vehicle and the damage caused to the cracked cement barrier.

“It appears that the vehicle catapulted over the barrier, flipped over maybe one time, landed on the passenger side,” said Utah County Sgt. Spencer Cannon.  The driver crawled out of the car a few feet onto the street; the other three were killed on impact. The victims have been identified as 16-year-old Jose Flores (the driver), 16-year-old Mario Lopez, 19-year-old Manuel Guttierez and 13-year-old Vanessa Estrada. There is no evidence to suggest alcohol or drugs were involved.

This is a tragic Utah car accident that claimed the lives of 4 young Utah residents. I offer condolences to their families.

Parents, do you know who your kids hang out with ? Do you allow them to be passengers in vehicles driven by under-aged drivers? On the last point, parents (and I’m in this category), need to be very careful as to who they will allow to drive their children around. A car full of teenagers and an inexperienced and irresponsible driver are a recipe for disaster. I know in this case that the parents of at least one of the children were unaware that their child was out in the middle of the night joyriding with friends. Sometimes you can’t prevent this type of situation from happening if the child has it in his or her mind that they want to go out. However, conversations with our children ahead of time as to who they are allowed to drive with, including the minimum age the driver must be, can go along way to make sure our teenage children stay safe.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 at 6:36 pm and is filed under Utah car accident, Wrongful Death, utah fatal car accident. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.