On December 2, 2006, my seventeen-year-old son, Reid, the driver, died in a one-car accident. On a three-lane Interstate highway that he probably never had driven before, on a dark night just after rain had stopped, and apparently traveling above the speed limit, he went too far into a curve before turning, then overcorrected, and went into a spin. While the physics of the moment could have resulted in any number of trajectories, his car hit the point of a guardrail precisely at the middle of the driver's-side door, which crushed the left-side of his chest.

• Safer teen driving starts with informed, conservative decisions about whether teens get behind the wheel of a car in the first place. Teaching teens to operate a vehicle safely is Step 2.
  
  
• Driving is the leading cause of death for people under age 20 in the United States.
  
  
• Safer teen driving is everyone's concern. In 2008, more than 2,700 teen drivers died in crashes, but their crashes killed more than 3,400 passengers, other drivers, and pedestrians.

Father of Reid S. Hollister, age 17, a driver, who died in the early morning of December 2, 2006, the result of a one-car accident on the evening of December 1, at Exit 34 on Interstate 84 East in Plainville, Connecticut.

Dear Readers: as some of you may have noticed, during the past six weeks I took some time away from regular posts on this blog. I wish I could say that I was relaxing on some beach or golf course, but I have been working on my book, His Father Still, and also doing some research for upcoming blog posts. Contrary to what some may think, these blogs do not write themselves, and some of the posts actually require some digging. The time has been productive. Upcoming on this blog is what will probabl...