Alfredo Herrera isn't going to wait for the next Glenelg High School student to die.
His son, Christian Herrera, was that school's most recent traffic death, one of about 1,000 16-year-olds killed each year in auto accidents across the nation.
"We all try to do our best with our children," said the Ellicott City pediatrician. "I did my best for him. It's obvious now that it wasn't enough."
Dr. Herrera has channeled his grief over his son's Dec. 10 death into pushing for programs to better educate young drivers about the dangers of reckless driving and for the state to strengthen its seat belt law and driver's license requirements.
Since his son died, Dr. Herrera has been studying issues involved in the deaths of young drivers. "You talk to anybody about 16-year-olds dying in auto accidents, and they'll tell you, 'Oh, it was alcohol,' " says Dr. Herrera. "That's not the case."
A week after Christian Herrera died, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety released a special edition of its periodical, Status Report, examining the national data on auto crashes involving 16-year-old drivers.
The nonprofit scientific and educational organization reported that in 1993, 90 percent of all fatally injured 16-year-old drivers had no alcohol in their blood.
Of the other 10 percent, only half had blood alcohol concentrations of 0.1 percent or more, which in most states is the legal threshold for drunken driving, the report said.
Christian Herrera had a blood-alcohol level of 0.059 percent when his 1994 Ford Explorer crashed in a culvert on Route 32, police say. He is one of seven Glenelg students who have died because of traffic accidents since 1988, a number authorities say eclipses all other county high schools.
Last week, , Dr. Herrera testified in Annapolis about the death of his son and other beginning drivers.
"It is the most common cause of death of young people between 15 and 21 years of age," he told state legislators. "It is killing more children than drugs, handguns, sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS."
He spoke in favor of a bill that would allow police to stop motorists for failing to obey the seat belt law. Currently, police must stop a car for another offense before they can issue a seat belt citation. Christian was not wearing his seat belt when his truck crashed. He was thrown through the vehicle's window.
Supporting the seat belt bill -- introduced by Montgomery County Democratic Sen. Ida G. Ruben and now before the state Senate's Judicial Proceedings Committee -- was only a first step for Dr. Herrera.
He also has asked Howard County Republican Sen. Christopher J. McCabe to introduce a bill that would require young driver's license applicants to take a driver safety course -- in addition to taking traditional driver education and obtaining their parents' permission for a license.
The state now requires 30 hours of classroom instruction and six hours of behind-the-wheel driving lessons, requirements Dr. Herrera calls "grossly inadequate" when it comes to safe driving habits.
Because Howard schools do not offer driver training classes, area students must take these courses at private schools.
"It teaches them how to sit behind the wheel and do these mechanical things, but I don't think it emphasizes safety in any way," Dr. Herrera said.
Mr. McCabe lauded Dr. Herrera's intention to curb highway deaths among teen-agers, but says he wants to take a look at any other teen-age driver safety ideas before making a commitment to the doctor.
Even the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the source of Dr. Herrera's ammunition, doesn't completely agree with him. Brian O'Neill, the institute's president, said that research shows that training doesn't seem to solve the problem.
"It's not that we're against education," he said. "It's just that we don't expect that teen-agers will stop acting like teen-agers because of a short course on behavior."
Like Dr. Herrera, the institute does support stronger seat belt legislation, citing a decline in fatalities in states that have such laws.
Dr. Herrera plans to meet with representatives of the county departments of education and fire and rescue services Tuesday to consider what the county can do to prevent such teen-age traffic accidents.
One possibility that he supports is a voluntary driver-safety course that high school students could sign up for in exchange for school parking privileges.
"It is a concept that the fire service and other agencies are very interested in," Battalion Chief Donald Howell, a fire and rescue services spokesman, said.
Although no plans have been made, Chief Howell said, one option would be something similar to a program in Baltimore County.
That program brings those involved in crippling or deadly accidents -- paramedics, emergency room doctors, victims and their survivors -- to talk to students about the dangers of irresponsible driving.
Chief Howell said he was impressed by one such program he attended, which was done as a student assembly.
"Just watching the mood of the students as the program began, you could hear a fair amount of chatter," he said. "But you could have heard a pin drop in that audience at the end, after the victims spoke." he said.
At the Institute for Highway Safety, Mr. O'Neill said the best way to save the lives of beginning drivers is to enact a graduated licensing program, which is more restrictive than Maryland's existing provisional licensing program.
In Maryland, 16- and 17-year-olds are not allowed to drive between midnight and 5 a.m during their first year behind the wheel -- unless they are accompanied by an adult.
But some states, such as North Carolina, are considering prohibiting teen-agers from night driving altogether, limiting the number of teen-agers allowed as passengers and adopting a zero blood-alcohol limit.
"There's very good evidence that when you've got groups of teen-agers in the car, especially at night, it's a prescription for disaster," Mr. O'Neill said.
Dr. Herrera is wary of lobbying for potentially unpopular causes -- such as radically curtailing driving privileges for 16-year-olds -- but he plans to continue trying to save young lives.
"Christian won't be here, but somebody else will, somebody else will die," he says. "What choice do we have? We can sit down and do nothing about it, or try to do something."