'They would be here if they had buckled their seat belts'

CHESAPEAKE

They planned to see a movie at MacArthur Center that Saturday.

Stephanie Barnett picked up Taylor Hayes from work. Stephanie always did stuff like that. The girls had been best friends since Stephanie moved to the neighborhood four years earlier. She was 18, two years older than Taylor, with a car and a driver's license and a 6-month-old baby.

They went home first so Taylor could change from a gray T-shirt to one with spaghetti straps. Afterwards, the girls picked up Taylor's boyfriend, Jeff Prindle, and headed to Norfolk.

They never did see the movie. After a little shopping - Taylor paid for some new shirts at American Eagle at 5:45 p.m. - the teenagers headed back to Chesapeake for dinner.

Jeff buckled up. Taylor and Stephanie didn't. Jeff survived. Taylor and Stephanie didn't.

They were on Interstate 664 just miles from the girls' Western Branch neighborhood when Stephanie lost control of the car at 6:14 p.m. Police said she was driving about 75 mph.

It ran off the road into a ditch and flipped, flinging both girls from the car. When passers-by stopped to help, Jeff was still buckled in.

Almost three weeks later, Taylor's and Stephanie's families are struggling. As far as they knew, their daughters usually wore seat belts. They believe the girls would have survived the wreck if they had.

Sixty-three percent of the 4,842 16- to 20-year-olds who died in vehicle accidents in 2006 weren't wearing seat belts, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported last month. That's despite laws and education campaigns that have been around at least as long as today's teens.

Young people aren't the only ones failing to buckle up - of 83 fatal car crashes involving all ages in South Hampton Roads in 2006, 34 weren't wearing seat belts.

Nationwide, 55 percent of all those killed in traffic wrecks in 2006 were not restrained,

according to the federal agency.

Still, teens tend to be the risk-takers, said Ellen Martin, administration spokeswoman. "Teenagers believe they are immortal."

Car crashes remain the leading cause of death for that age group, Martin said. "It's a stunning reality."

There's a table now in the Hayeses' sunroom, right by the door, filled up with a young girl's life: a high school yearbook signed days before her death, a National Junior Honor Society certificate, photos in frames. There is Taylor as a toddler in a polka-dot dress on the beach, Taylor in a ballet tutu, Taylor at her first job in an ice cream shop where she'd told the owner his coupons should offer a discount rather than freebies.

The family needed a place for everything brought home from the funeral, said Taylor's mother, Tammy Hayes. So they put it here, in the room that leads out to the backyard where she and her husband, Greg, last saw their daughter.

Greg was in the swimming pool that last day of May, and Tammy was cleaning the house. She watched Taylor leave, and was taken by how cute she looked in a new purple miniskirt with her hair up.

At 16, she was coming into her own.

"I'm living and loving life," Taylor had written in her journal the month before she died. "I have a wonderful boyfriend, family and friends. I do good in school, and I've learned to love myself."

Taylor didn't look much different in the ambulance a few hours later, Tammy said. She had some scrapes and bruises. But, "she looked peaceful."

She died before rescue workers got there.

"She was always telling everybody to buckle up," Tammy said.

"I think you can say she'd more than likely be here if she'd been wearing a seat belt," Greg said.

"And Stephanie," Tammy added.

The older girl lived two doors down with her mother, Karen Ferrara, her stepfather, a younger brother and sister and her baby, Riley.

Karen wanted Stephanie to go to Wal-Mart with her that afternoon. But Stephanie wanted to go out with friends, so Karen said she could help unpack the car later.

Rescue workers revived Stephanie at the scene, Karen said, but she died a short time later at the hospital.

Stephanie had graduated from high school a year early and was going to Tidewater Community College.

She was working and volunteering for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation - she'd been diagnosed with the disease at age 6. She was raising Riley with her family's help.

Now that job is left to Karen, a stay-at-home mother.

She was on the scene of the accident, too, and remembers seeing the car flipped over in the ditch. It looked awful, like no one could have survived. Then, a few days ago, she found photos of the towed car, now upright.

"I didn't even think it was from the accident," Karen said.

But it was. The hood wasn't dented. Everything inside was intact.

"To see this car and to know that they would be here if they had buckled their seat belts, it's just the most horrible feeling you could imagine," Karen said. "They may have broken an arm or a leg, or gotten a concussion. But they would be here."

A week after the crash, Tammy went to Karen's house.

Two weeks after, Karen went to Tammy's with her favorite picture of their girls together. Both had startling blue eyes so similar they could have passed for sisters.

It helps to have each other, the women say.

And it helps to know that the loss of their daughters may prevent future deaths.

After the accident, students at Western Branch High School, where Taylor had been a freshman and Stephanie had graduated in 2007, began signing a pledge promising to always wear their seat belts and encourage others to do the same.

It began in Catherine Albertson's history class, Taylor's first period. It was therapy for the young teacher who had never lost a student, and therapy for the teenagers. Taylor's row emptied that Monday back at school because the students said it felt too weird to sit there.

Classmate Mark Fatico's mother suggested the pledge. Taylor had been his Greek mythology project partner.

He signed.

Cristen Cottrell signed. They'd shared a few classes together.

Sometimes, Cristen would stop by Taylor's work for some ice cream.

It was awful, she said, seeing her one day and knowing she was gone the next. She wrote a poem and left it on the grave site.

Tyler Campbell signed.

Taylor was his first girlfriend, back in elementary school. He'd given her a necklace.

More than 1,000 others signed the book beneath a pink banner on their lunch breaks the last week of school.

That banner lay across the Hayes' dining room table this week. The book full of signatures sat on the table in the sunroom.

Taylor and Stephanie planned to be teachers.

Their parents say, now, that job falls to them.

Kristin Davis, (757) 222-5208, kristin.davis@pilotonline.com