Let me tell you about the time I thought it would be brilliant to balance on a shopping cart like a surfboard in an empty parking lot at 2 AM. I was seventeen, moon drunk on that particular cocktail of exhaustion and invincibility unique to adolescence. The scrape on my knee afterward bled like a crime scene, but I walked it off. We all have these stories, the ones that make us whisper ‘thank god’ into our middle aged hands decades later.

This week, the Mornington Peninsula gave us a darker variation. During schoolies celebrations marking the end of high school, an eighteen year old boy fell from the roof of a moving car. He’s in stable condition now, we’re told, which is medical shorthand for ‘survived something that should have killed him.’ The details are numbingly familiar. Five friends inside the car. Two more perched on top like daredevil hood ornaments. Low speed movement in a car park. One terrible slip. A helicopter ride to the hospital. A teenage driver now facing charges that will follow him longer than the memory of whatever joke they were all laughing about seconds before gravity intervened.

Here’s what lodges in my throat like a fishbone every time these stories surface. We assign adult consequences to brains still marinating in their own hormonal brine. The eighteen year old driver wasn’t legally a child when this happened, but neurologically? The prefrontal cortex responsible for weighing risks versus rewards doesn’t fully mature until around twenty five. Biology makes teenagers glorious idiots. Society tells them to act like mini adults. Then we’re stunned when these two realities collide.

Schoolies week itself is a fascinating social experiment. We push teenagers through thirteen years of structured learning, uniforms, and bells ringing every fifty minutes. Then we unleash them into coastal towns with a hormonal green light and say ‘Okay fledglings! Make perfect choices about alcohol, strangers, and transporting your friends like human luggage!’ Telling eighteen year olds they’re suddenly responsible adults is like handing someone car keys midway through driver’s ed because they aced parallel parking once.

I don’t say this to excuse recklessness. Someone made choices here that could have turned a celebration into a funeral. But it’s worth examining why smart kids keep doing spectacularly dumb things whenever freedom gets handed to them like a graduation tassel. Consider the mixed messages we offer our almost adults. You can’t rent a car until twenty five. You can enlist in the military at eighteen. You’re too immature for a hotel room booking, but old enough to sign student loan paperwork that’ll haunt you until menopause. We’ve created a developmental twilight zone where society can’t decide if eighteen year olds need helicopter parenting or a helicopter medevac.

The truly uncomfortable truth? Teenagers aren’t the only ones failing at risk assessment here. Adult society sets the stage for these tragedies through neglect disguised as independence. Schoolies events often overflow with corporate sponsored drinking tents but sparse supervision for kids navigating their first unsupervised days. We’ll sell an eighteen year old a six pack but not teach them how to recognize alcohol poisoning in a friend. Road safety campaigns target seat belts and speeding, not the physics of why human bodies and asphalt disagree at any velocity.

Remember the shocked whispers when a Brisbane schoolies party featured teens jumping between apartment balconies in 2023? Or the Darwin incident where celebrants used ute trays as party buses? Every year brings a new variation on the theme of youthful exuberance meeting physics. Every year we respond with temporary horror before resetting the cycle. This indicates a systemic failure, not just personal stupidity.

Watching my own niece pack for schoolies last year was revelatory. Her meticulously planned outfits suggested a music festival. The emergency contact list I found accidentally left on the printer suggested a military operation. It included instructions like ‘If someone wanders off drunk, assign two sober friends to retrieve them’ and ‘Call an adult BEFORE needing an ambulance, not after.’ The kids are trying harder than we think to protect themselves. But they’re playing chess against chaos theory with half the pieces missing.

What’s the alternative? Not celebration, obviously. Teenagers earned their graduation stripes. But perhaps we could stop treating their first taste of freedom like a reality show obstacle course. Some Australian communities have quietly innovated here. Geelong’s schoolies volunteers include former paramedics who patrol not to police, but to quietly remind kids about hydration stations. The Sunshine Coast’s ‘Red Frogs’ program deploys thousands of volunteers annually not to judge, but to make pancakes and walk wobbly teens back to their lodgings. These initiatives treat adolescents like people instead of problems. The results speak for themselves injury rates drop where support replaces suspicion.

This isn’t about bubble wrapping our youth. It’s about acknowledging their brains work differently. My thirty seven year old self knows climbing on car roofs is idiocy. My eighteen year old self saw it as an excellent way to photograph the sunset while impressing boys. Wisdom comes not from lectures but from surviving small mistakes before big ones happen. Today’s teens get fewer practice runs than any previous generation. Constant supervision means fewer opportunities to learn from minor mishaps, so when freedom finally arrives, they binge on risk like it’s their last meal.

Which brings us to the uncomfortable mirror. Adults create environments where dangerous choices seem reasonable through inaction. Proper lighting in schoolies zones. Safe transport options that don’t involve experimental seating arrangements. Medical tents staffed by nurses rather than relying on heroes in flip flops performing first aid. These aren’t radical ideas. They’re the equivalent of putting foam padding on sharp corners when toddlers learn to walk. We accept that kids learning mobility need safeguards. Why do we pretend eighteen year olds mastering independence shouldn’t?

Somewhere between the roadside where that young man fell and the courtroom where his friend will stand, there’s a teachable moment being missed. We’re quick to assign blame like it’s a pie to slice between stupidity and bad parenting. Less comfortable is examining how our cultural coming of age rituals set kids up for failure. Schoolies should be more than a Darwinian test of who survives their own poor judgment. It could be a bridge between childhood and adulthood, with guide ropes.

Next week, when this story fades from headlines, another group of teenagers will make choices under the influence of freedom and cortisol. Some of those choices will be legendarily bad. My hope isn’t for perfect teens, because that’s science fiction. My hope is for communities that buffer their falls better, that intercede before the helicopter lifts off, that remember adolescent brains are masterpieces under construction. Not rubber. Not invincible. Not yet. And never completely to blame when our safeguards fail them.