You know it's true.

If you're a parent of a male or female teenager and you've given them a new car, something really nice and sporty, like a Mustang, Mitubishi or any other number of quick, fast, hot cars, you need to admit to yourself that at some point, or at any point that you can't see your son or daughter, they drive too fast.

You know they do. If you want to plant your feet and deny that they do, then you're a fool.

No slight on your parenting skills is intended, there's no personal attack here, and, yes, I am making a sweeping, broad brush statement. I don't care. I've had more than enough young women (notice I'm putting them first) and young men trying to pass me by inserting themselves and their car into my exhaust pipe with the intention of moving through me, as opposed to around me. This isn't really new, nor are my own hands clean; I, like almost all my teenage friends, occasionally drove too fast, too often, and probably came too close to going to the hospital instead of going home. And we all lost friends or family because of things done with fast cars and the results of stupid, immature intentions.

The recent phenomena seems to be the plethora of new, fast cars owned by teens; the number of those cars 'given' to teens by their parents; and the rising number of young women who drive as recklessly as young men. I'm not going to listen to any rationalizing, I really don't give a damn as to why you think your son or daughter should have, and can handle, a new, fast car. I also realize that a 4-banger Hyundai can be as deadly as a missile while under the piss-poor control of a teenager. I also realize that there may be teens out there who, god love them, actually drive their new car in a safe and sane manner, but this whole teen driving cluture is interconnected; somewhere along the line, the influence of another teen will come into play, whether your good-driving teen is a passenger in someone else's fast car, or that other fast car and your good-driving teen's car meet in some way that doesn't have to be described here.

Y'know, this message is so old, and always relevant, but I can hardly believe that at the age of 52 (I got no problem with being numerically old) I am now someone who feels the importance of repeating this message. Now, here's a kicker for y'all: I don't have kids. I love em', but don't have any. Now there might be more than a few of you that would insist that I shut my yammer portal right now, since I don't belong to the Parents Club, but I would tell you that I have a better idea of what your kids did when you weren't around, for those of you whose kids are now parents themselves, than you ever did. The reason that I was privvy to this behavior?

I worked in rock and roll. I saw you, and I saw your kids, and I saw you and/or them doing the most amazing things.

I know things change, though, and I'm not in rock and roll to the same degree as, as, well, a while ago, but the point remains valid: to some degree, teens do things that could get them in all sorts of trouble, and those that don't can get in trouble because of those others.

Steve Coursey is a columnist for a New York Times-owned newspaper in Northern California, and last week he wrote a column about Ford, teens and death, and dang if he didn't get the right response from the car company. You may have seen a particular commercial for the Ford Mustang in which, to summarize, a young man drives a Mustang like an idiot around a desserted parking lot kind of place, and his dad is in the passenger seat, and, oh so cleverly, looks as if he's going to admonish his offspring, BUT NO, he giggles and says something to the effect of, "Again!", whereupon they go off like two assholes in a Mustang.

Welp, in a Northern California county they had this problem of a bunch of teenagers who had all died in several different accidents, all involving brandspankingnew Mustangs that their parents bought for them. Mind you, this is not the place to go on about this, and we all feel the grief of any lost soul, especially young souls. So, when this goofy, and not really well done anyway commercial aired in this part of the country, one of the county supervisers essentially said, if I may paraphrase, "this is bullshit". He called Coursey, Coursey called Ford, and dang, Ford pulled the commercial...from Northern Califronia rotation.

Qucik aside here: not all national commercials air nationally during the same time period, for various reasons. If you haven't seen the commerical, you may yet still see it.

I wish there was a way to make this message fresh, although maybe if I'm pissing you off because you feel I'm besmirching your parenting skills, some of that will manifest itself in some additional dialog with your kids (I'm sure that right now most of you parents are shaking your head at my apparent naivete, but let's move on). Hey, you got the ability to give your kids something like a car, that's great, and I'm really happy for all of you. Just keep in mind that there are a lot of really nice, shiny cars, that can go fast enough on the highway without launching into orbit. It's been shown through studies that kids' brains ain't quite finished, and that unfinished part is one of the reasons that kids don't always make the 'best' choices, so there'a always going to be some issue to deal with.

I'm just trying to get one or two of you to really think about how truly, truly sad that polite but insistent knocking on your front door could be at two o'clock in the morning.