Teenage driver's tragic message

The first thing Jaye Garnham could remember being told after he ran a red light and crashed a car into a truck last year was that two of his friends were dead.

"They didn't say who," the 16-year-old said at the weekend as he told his story to a group of teenagers in Hastings.

The "don't-think-it-won't-happen-to-you" message was delivered to a silent group of 18 teenagers, all considered by police to be at-risk on the road.

They spent the weekend being taught by police how not to cause tragedies such as the one resulting from Garnham's crash on the Hawkes Bay Expressway last September.

Garnham was fulfilling a pledge, made through his lawyer in the High Court in June, to be available to organisations trying to spread messages about dangers on the road.

After the talk he said: "I lost two good schoolmates. I know I will never see them again. It hurts me. We were just having fun, not even thinking about the consequences of jumping into a car."

Toni O'Kane, the mother of one of the boys who died, also spoke.

She told how she had last seen her son when he "went off with his mates" before the crash, how when he was brought home in a coffin his injuries were so bad the coffin was left closed, how his father struggled over the loss of his "best friend", and how the family still struggled to cope with the grief.

Garnham pleaded guilty in June in the High Court at Napier to dangerous driving causing the deaths of Sam O'Kane, 15, and James Te Whaiti, 16, and injuries to his two other passengers.

He was sentenced to 200 hours' community work and disqualified from driving for three years. Changes to laws in 2002 meant he could not be jailed because he was under 17 at the time of the crash.

Police youth services officer Sue Robinson said half the teenagers had been caught driving without licences, and the other half had been caught for other offences, including drink-driving.

All those who started without licences were successfully put through their learner-driver tests, and the rest through defensive driving courses.

The course was sponsored by Roadsafe Hawkes Bay and the police youth project Blue Light.

- NZPA