This has been a terrible week for local high schools.  Not only did two Harrisburg boys die in a car accident Monday, two sisters who attend school in Viborg also died in an accident Thursday. 

These accidents involving young people are always shocking.  But we never seem to learn from them.

Sure, their peers might drive a little more carefully for a week or so.  The rest of us probably slow down and are more attentive--for a while.  Then it is back to driving as normal--or worse.

In the 1940s when my mother a young woman, she was in a terrible car crash and was left for dead.  Then she was told she would never walk again.  She broke her pelvis.  She had a wonderfully supportive mother and her own great determination and she went on to not just walk, but walk without a limp.

My father was a motorhead as a young man and had numerous accidents.  It wasn't until he flipped his convertible, was stuck underneath, and smelled something burning that he decided to exercise more caution.

Mom and Dad were both lucky which makes me lucky.

In drivers education class in high school in the 1970s, I can remember seeing those awful "Broken Glass" films of terrible car accidents that tried to scare the crap out of you and good sense into you.

Of course, two of my classmates from high school died in a car accident when they smacked into a bridge abutment at a high rate of speed.

Then there are this week's tragedies in Sioux Falls, Harrisburg, and Viborg.

We just don't learn.  We think we are immune.  We don't think it is our time.  We continue to drive recklessly or thoughtlessly or someone else does and our time is up.  It just all seems so hopeless.

I'm sure as long as there have been automobiles, there have been senseless, horrific car accidents involving young people.

Why can't they learn?  What can't the rest of us learn?  While cars are safer and driver education is better and the death rate from accidents has decreased, young people and car accidents are still far, far too common in American society.  What more will it take to get through to all of us?

I offer no answers, just questions.  And a hope and a prayer that maybe my son and daughter have learned something from this week about the awesome responsibilities of driving and the preciousness of life.