A week after I was lamenting the tragic loss of Tyson Leader’s life when he fell 24 storeys from a Gold Coast high-rise, many Sunshine Coast residents are scratching their heads over the death of a teenager in a high-speed crash just south of Gympie.

According to police, the driver of the car was 15, speed was involved, the victim – a Bli Bli teenager – was not wearing a seatbelt, and there was alcohol involved.

Like police, many are wondering what parents are letting their kids out until 3am in the morning.

But this is not an isolated incident.

Drive along Mooloolaba in the early hours of the morning and you will see hundreds of kids, some as young as 12, wandering the streets, some so intoxicated that anything could happen to them.

Police, for their part, have done everything in their power to reduce the carnage on our roads.

Since three teenagers died on Karawatha Drive at Mountain Creek, they have run Attitudinal Driving Workshops highlighting the extreme dangers to young drivers on our roads.

When you look at the wreckage of the high-powered Holden Commodore these youths were driving on the weekend, you wonder why any teenager should be allowed to be in control of such a vehicle – let alone a 15-year-old.

There is no doubt that many will be calling for tough action against the accused driver.

History shows the courts will do little, if anything.

After all, we see adult drink-drivers getting into their cars after being disqualified from driving in Maroochydore Magistrates Court.

Our courts are seen as a joke – and so are the magistrates and judges who keep repeating their “warnings” about how they are going to jail offenders if they come before the courts again.

If I had a dollar for every story I had read about such warnings, I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this – I’d be cruising the globe without a care in the world, and certainly not wondering about who I would read about dying tomorrow.

When are our courts – and parents of such kids, for that matter – going to wake up and realise that if we allow kids to get behind the wheel drunk, or without a care in the world, some are going to die.

And we are collectively to blame because we either did not lay down the ground rules or failed to enforce them.

Of course, there are parents who argue, quite rightly, that they are powerless to stop their teenagers going off. They say the law is stacked in the kids’ favour, and everything from home away allowances to restrictions on what action parents can legally take means that teenagers can get away with murder.

While that might be true in some cases, do we all just throw our hands up in the air and say, “Oh well, there’s nothing we can do about it”.

The big stick is not the only answer, of course.

We do need to provide more safe entertainment options for our youth, and get them involved in that process so the alternatives to clubs and pubs are appealing to them.

And governments, at all levels, need to provide more support for parents with wayward children, especially those from broken family backgrounds, which sometimes give rise to broken teenagers who choose alcohol and fast cars to vent the rage they feel inside.

At the end of the day, we all have to take a long, hard look at the direction we are heading – and what we can all do to end the senseless slaughter of our young.

Sammy’s all better

On a much brighter note, thank you to those who expressed your sympathy and support after my three-year-old son Samuel had to be taken to hospital last week.

After being sick all weekend with a virus, the poor little bloke became very dehydrated and had temperatures of up to 40 degrees.

A night and day in hospital still failed to fix him, so he had to have a tube inserted via his nose into his stomach so he could take in fluids.

After a very uncomfortable first hour, Samuel fell asleep and woke up the next morning a different boy.

Thank you to the wonderful staff at Nambour General Hospital and all those who had him in your thoughts and prayers.

This week we can’t keep up with him, so he’s back to normal.