One of Colette's friends - also 15 and driving with a learner's permit but without the required adult - had run a stop sign, sending the car into the truck's path. The impact spared only a 17-year-old boy in the back.
In the 14 months since, Colette's parents have filled some of the emptiness with a crusade trying to prevent other families from the same tragedy. Lynda and Scott Barnes helped push a new law they think could have saved their daughter by making sure the driver was better trained.
''We had to do something - we're losing our kids,'' said a teary Lynda Barnes, surrounded in her Mason home by pictures of Colette and her two other daughters. ''I've got another one coming up and I don't want to lose any more.''
The law, passed last month, makes Michigan one of a growing number of states to establish a multi-step licensing system that limits teens' freedom to drive until they gain experience.
Eleven states now have such ''graduated licensing'' requirements, and many others have approved less comprehensive restrictions. At least eight more states are looking at placing additional limits on teen drivers.
''It's a major problem in all the states with young drivers,'' said state Rep. Dan Gustafson (R-Williamston) the Michigan bill's sponsor. ''Quite frankly, it's a national epidemic.''
Encouraging teens to use seat belts and not drive after drinking has dropped teen-age crash fatalities from their peak in 1986. But motor vehicle accidents still are the top killer of teens - and are on the rise again.
And though teens made up 5.1 percent of the country's licensed drivers in 1994, they accounted for 13.9 percent of deaths.
Those in the safety community say a lot is riding on their hopes for graduated driver's licensing, because experts have few - if any - ideas left about how to make teens safer drivers.
Studies have shown between 5 percent and 16 percent reductions in youth crashes in places that have some graduated licensing provisions.
The restrictions appear to work because they address the chief problem for youth drivers: not alcohol, or even a higher tendency to take risks, but inexperience, several experts said.
''It's really to train people to drive the same way we train people to do a lot of other complex tasks - a little bit at a time,'' said Rob Foss, with the University of North Carolina's Highway Safety Research Center.
Maryland was first to enact some features of graduated licensing in 1979. But only in the last year or two have a larger number of states given the plan serious attention, safety experts say.
''There's increasing recognition that what we're doing isn't working,'' said Patricia Waller, who authored the graduated licensing concept 30 years ago and now heads the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute.
Kentucky and Michigan - which along with Florida approved graduated licensing this year - are considered to have the most extensive programs.
Thirteen-year-old Brenden Gunnell of Haslett is horrified at the hoops he'll have to jump through to get a license under Michigan's new law.
''I hate it,'' he said. ''I'm going to want to go on dates, and now (my dad) will have to drive me.''
When the law takes effect in April, young drivers no longer will need just driver's education and 30 days with a learner's permit to get a license. Instead, they will have to go through a complex three-stage process.
Michigan teens will have to stay conviction- and accident-free to progress at each stage. And a ''zero tolerance'' law already in effect holds teens to a legal blood-alcohol limit of 0.02 percent, compared with the 0.10 percent for adults.
What other states are doing varies widely.
But most states still have attached few rules to getting an unrestricted driver's license. Only 29 require a learner's permit at all.
Proponents also remain frustrated at lawmakers' reluctance to approve what they see a crucial provision - limiting the number of passengers in a teen's car.
Only New Zealand has such a restriction. Michigan's bill had one, but lawmakers removed it for fear of overly burdening parents.
Briana Gunnell, Brenden's 16-year-old sister, says watching friends who feel invincible to accidents makes her glad about Michigan's new law, because she thinks her brother will be safer.
''A lot of kids who don't have a license don't like it,'' she said. ''But I've just seen too many crazy drivers my age, and I'm scared.''
AP PHOTO
Scott and Lynda Barnes hold a picture of their daughter, Colette, in their Mason, Mich., home on Oct. 9. Colette was killed in a car crash 14 months ago, and since then the pair has worked to get a law passed in Michigan that establishes a multi-step licensing system that limits teens' freedom to drive until they gain experience behind the wheel.