Teens, please, heed these awful lessons.

Byline: Bob Welch / The Register-Guard

Springtime.

Dogwood blossoms. Frisbees. Fresh-cut grass. Mangled 17-year-old bodies trapped in crumpled cars. Weeping parents. Surgeons plucking glass out of a face that no longer looks much like her senior picture.

Ah, spring. Proms. Graduations. Road trips. Funeral processions.

Traffic deaths have recently racked Pleasant Hill and North Eugene. It's been less than a month since Sumer Solesbee became the fourth member of Cottage Grove High's class of 2003 to die in a car accident in the past two years. And two Marshfield High students were killed Sunday in a crash after an overnight party in the woods.

Now comes the homestretch of spring, where the potential for bad things to happen to good kids starts to soar.

These accidents weren't all linked to partying or high spirits, but they all involved kids. And at North Eugene, where a student was killed in March by an out-of-control pickup, Principal Peter Tromba says: "More kids are drinking this time of year. It's nice outside. Kids are out of school, feeling euphoric. They're more reckless."

Fifteen- to-19-year-old drivers in Oregon are twice as likely to be involved in a fatal vehicle accident than the population as a whole, the Oregon Department of Transportation says. And in 2001, nearly a third of the 58 traffic fatalities in that age group involved alcohol.

So here's my plea for high-schoolers: Assuming you've got a life, keep that life.

Take it from someone who still remembers the four students from my hometown killed in an Interstate 5 crash.

Someone who once got a call from an Episcopal priest at a hospital saying, "Come fast. Your mother's been in a car wreck and might not make it."

Someone who had to phone two dozen members of the 20Below team to tell them that one of their colleagues, Mario Miranda, had died in a car crash.

Better yet, take it from David Hanson, who was once one of you - invincible. Nearly four years ago, he drank enough beer to send his blood-alcohol content to nearly triple the limit, hopped in his car and missed a turn near Churchill High - doing 75 mph in a 25 mph zone.

He lived. And he also learned. Which is why he hauls the twisted car he was driving - a 1995 Ford Contour - to middle schools and high schools for show and tell.

"I'm just trying to keep someone from learning the hard way," he says.

Collapsed lung. Fractured skull. Shattered shoulder blade. Legs broken in three spots. Facial cuts requiring more than 200 stitches. Hanson believes it's a miracle he's alive. But if, at age 26, he appreciates every breath he takes, most young people don't live with such an awareness of their frailty.

"Kids think they're borderline invincible," he says. ` `Oh, maybe it might happen to someone I know, but not me. No, no.' '

He doesn't tiptoe through his talks. "I tell them they don't want to experience what I did - food being pumped into their stomach and sucked out because my digestive system wasn't working. And the guys probably don't want a catheter inserted into their penis every time they want to urinate."

Then, he says, there's the pain you cause others. "That's probably the major thing kids don't get - and I know because I was there myself years ago. They don't realize how many people their lives affect. If people realized that, they'd be way more responsible."

So, high-schoolers, next time you're on the brink of driving drunk, dangerously or both - or considering riding with someone who fits that description - think about the springtime of your youth.

Diplomas. Parties. The future in your hands. Two-hundred stitches in your face. The catheter ...

Stay safe. You're the only one of you the world has.

Bob Welch can be reached at 338-2354 or at [e-mail].