Wednesday, April 30, 2003

I am a former U.S. Marine who lives off Golf View Drive [in Peachtree City.

I have a beautiful wife and two young children ages 7 and 4. When this whole Golf View stop signs and speed bump thing came up last year, I was not really interested. Since I live on Pinemount Drive, the speed at which people drove down Golf View was not my concern. Then my son started at Peachtree Elementary and had to get picked up by the bus on Golf View, coincidently at a friend of the family's house.

I started to see firsthand the complete disregard to stop signs and speed limits the high school kids in this town have. The blatant disregard to speed limits and stop signs are not exclusively to the 16- to 18-year-old drivers. I personally watched several mothers with kids in the back of their mini-vans drive through one of the three-way stop signs with out even a slowdown.

Due to the stop signs and speed bumps put up on Golf View (some of which have since been removed) the high school kids and older drivers started cutting through my street. Now, on a daily basis my wife and I are reminded how fast the 16- to 18-year-old high school kids drive as well as older drivers. Everyday there are dozens of vehicles that pass at a high rate of speed by my house. Everyday they speed past my two children risking their life and more importantly the life of my children.

You may think that we in the Golf View community are whining. Well, I invite you to my house for the third time in this article to sit and watch. The best times are in the morning between the hours of 7 and 9 a.m. and the afternoon from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Weird how that is around the time these Peachtree City high schoolers are going to and returning from school.

I believe if you complain you should have a solution in mind, otherwise shut up. My solution to this issue on Golf View is this. No one under the age of 18 can drive. They can't drive anything, not golf carts and especially not cars.

Yes, I was 16 once and you better believe I shouldn't have been driving. Neither should you nor your 16-year-old children. You know it, I just have the "you know what" to admit it. When the government set the age of 16 as the minimum age for driving, they were wrong then and they are wrong now.

My neighbor is probably going to kill me because she turns 16 this year. I will admit though she is one of only a handful of 16-year-olds that can handle the responsibility of driving. For you young readers, driving is not a right; it is a privilege. Don't write a response to this by saying you have some "right" because you don't. No one has a "right" to drive. Everyone's license is a privilege issued by the state of Georgia.

Now that I got that off my chest, I realize that the age probably won't change. So the other solution would be to hold the parents responsible for all that the 16- to 18-year-old does behind the wheel. If the teenager gets a speeding ticket, so does the parents. If the teenager kills someone then the parents lose their house and get a record as well. I bet the "Parenting Issue" would go away. Just a couple of smart solutions to think about.

To anyone who is under the belief that Golf View residents are whining. I invite you to join us in our little community seeing that you think it is so safe that we don't need Peachtree City's finest in the area.

Skip Stephenson

Peachtree City