Yuridia Balburina and Josh Sprague are not household names. Unlike the Colorado teen-agers whose deaths at the hands of two schoolmates elicited extensive coverage, their deaths occasioned no national media response. Why some teen-age deaths become the occasion of ongoing policy debates while others are treated as mere background noise is a subject worthy of analysis.

Balburina, a 15-year-old resident of Los Angeles, died in a 12-by-20-foot garage, the only “home” her family could afford. She was killed by a stray bullet. A local reporter suggested that poverty, by forcing the family to leave a safer home and neighborhood for the uncertain circumstances of life in a garage, was the real killer.

Sprague, a recent graduate of Mount Desert Island High School, died when his car left the road and hit a tree. Protected by both a seat belt and an air bag, neither alcohol nor excessive speed were involved in the crash.

One could find stories of teen-age deaths like these hundreds of times over throughout the country. The chances that a teen-ager will be shot in school are about as unlikely as winning the lottery.

Murdering 12 classmates and planting bombs intended to kill many more is appalling. A society that paid no attention when some teens had become so vicious and alienated that they intentionally take the lives of their fellow students would be morally amiss.

Nonetheless, there is also something lacking in our response to tragedies like those of Balburina and Sprague. We unreflectively accept cars as absolutely necessary to modern, humane life. We treat auto accidents as an inevitable, albeit sometimes tragic, risk of growing up. We regard death from poverty as hardly new and scarcely news.

Both tragedies should lead us to reexamine our prevalent concepts of progress and economic justice. The United States is currently the most inegalitarian industrial democracy in the world, and in no other society does the auto play so central a role. We should not be surprised that, as the case of Balburina illustrates, many cars enjoy as good housing as our poor. Life in a garage even beats the housing opportunities some of the urban and rural poor enjoy today.

In our culture, the auto is both a symbol of immense private affluence and a cause of public squalor. The social and economic costs of our obsessive auto dependence are a major cause of inadequate public transit, limited public education, and unequal access to good jobs.

When we consider citizens like Balburina, welfare “reform” should immediately come to mind. Despite recent increases in the minimum wage, the long-term decline in wages for most entry level jobs leaves the working poor in desperate straits. Boston Globe columnist Robert Kuttner nicely summarizes their dilemma: “Most of the poor, of course, hold jobs and work hard. They work in nursing homes taking care of our elderly parents, they enter data, clean toilets, push brooms, ship inventory, and sling fast food. They are the people, as Jesse Jackson used to say, who `take the early bus.”‘

Unfortunately, in many of our communities, there is no bus, early or late. Getting to work makes any job a costly and time-consuming project. The lack of transit options also affects many children. Since the poor struggle to maintain even one car, transportation for their children to and from extracurricular school events often becomes a luxury that must be bypassed. These children all too easily become second-class citizens, adding to the alienation from school they often already feel. And because middle-class Americans have invested so much in cars for their children, many resent and resist proposals to expand the kind of transportation options that would allow all children genuinely equal access to all school activities.

Life and death among American teens is, however, more than just a story of rich and poor. Access to the auto conveys a distinct advantage, but it takes the lives of many a talented and well-liked middle-class child. Jane Holtz Kay reports in Asphalt Nation that adolescent suburban males die from car crashes at a rate equal to the fatalities from gun shots in inner city neighborhoods.

Advocates of social justice should take cold comfort for this because both phenomena are intimately connected social pathologies. I am pleased that principals all over Maine have been concerned about the problem of guns in schools. Nonetheless, I hope that in their capacity as advocates of equal opportunity in the public schools they will consider the role that alternative modes of transit might play in providing broader and safer access to educational and cultural opportunities for all our children.

As we lament the unnecessary loss of teen-age life, these themes deserve more of our attention.

John Buell is a political economist who lives in Southwest Harbor. Readers wishing to contact him may e-mail comments to jbuell@acadia.net.