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Yaofeng, I respect your position.
I wasn't really even referring to punishment in my original response, to be honest.
First, the issue of her paying for the damage is one of responsibility, rather than of punishment. Anyone who drives a car is/should be responsible for the costs associated with the priviledge. If you drift off into la-la land and forget to close a door prior to backing out, then you're responsible for the consequences, whatever they may be. You would be, and she should be. It is the driver's responsibility. And as I said in the prior post, I'd rather see her responsible for a repair bill than for the lost life of another driver on some other occasion if she doesn't learn from this incident.
My response to your post is bred of far too many years of law enforcement experience, during which I had far too many duties associated with peeling teenager's body parts off of trees, and/or making death notifications to their parents.
For this reason, I have a heartfelt, yet perhaps overly dramatic view of teenaged drivers, and whether or not they should be given such an overwhelming responsibility as driving at such an early age. (We have 15-year-olds driving here, which I opin to be well beyond ridiculous.)
Our highways are laden with wooden crosses bearing the names of teenaged drivers (and others) who perished at/near those locations. There is a reason...several, really...why auto insurance companies place a very high premium on the adolescent driver.
Young drivers, regardless of how responsible they may be in general as compared with other adolescents, are swirling with raging hormones, curious as to how their makeup looks (so that's what the rear-view mirror is for!), anxious to impress a passenger pal, interested in who's going with whom to the Homecoming dance, bound and determined to find that song on the CD or radio, and on and on and on ad nauseum. They are dangerous drivers...ESPECIALLY when they are driving and yakking on a cell phone!
The ONLY way to shake up a young driver when they prove to lack the responsibility adequate to hold the driving priviledge is to remove that priviledge for a period of time, such that when the priviledge is offered again, they will set their minds to all of the many very serious actions which accompany such an awesome responsibility as operating a motor vehicle on a public way.
I think your daughter is very fortunate, really. I know young drivers who have learned this lesson in far more substantially life-altering ways...for instance, the kid who drove right into a six-year-old crossing the street to get on a schoolbus with her daddy. The daddy survived...but only in a manner of speaking, because his little girl did not.
You, as a daddy, have a much simpler task here.
I will now step down from my soapbox. :)
Julia
posted by 142.167.38...
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