The state House has approved a bill that would restrict -- to one -- the number of under-18 passengers (other than family members) that a 16- or 17-year-old driver may have in a car at one time.

I'd never say your average teenager is stupid. Put three of them in a car together, though, and they can get real stupid, real fast. That is why -- and I don't say this often -- I'm very much in favor of what America's Largest Full-Time State Legislature is doing.

We can go with the statistics provided by AAA: In a recent 10-year period, motor vehicle accidents involving a junior driver in Pennsylvania killed 1,076 people of all ages, and two-thirds of those killed were people other than the driver. Traffic accidents are the No. 1 killer of teenagers in America.

Or we can just think back to when we were the young and the reckless.

I got my license at 17. I can remember the night I got off probation and celebrated it with a carload of girls and boys in my parents' station wagon, running a stop sign as the clock turned midnight. Festive.

I remember riding with Danny Hoffman and him asking, "Do you wanna play Harry-Kadarry-Kadabba?"

"How do you play?" I asked.

"Like this," said he, slamming on the brakes and bouncing me off the dashboard. Creative.

I almost shudder when I remember standing up in Patrick Dervin's speeding convertible and reaching out to try to touch a classmate's hand in a car in the next lane.

We also had a thing in our town about driving over each other's lawns. Jimmy Marshall was the recognized master of the art. One night, after coming home from a party, I was getting ready to go to bed when I heard some laughter outside. I went to the window.

What to my wondering eyes did appear but Jimmy Marshall in his Gran Torino. He was driving up our sloping lawn, right over the cesspool. I ran down the stairs, out the door and jumped on the car's hood, banging on the windshield, yelling, "Back up, you idiot, you'll sink our lawn!"

I was evidently persuasive, because Marshall backed up and drove on to the next lawn, probably the Philpotts'. It was on a flat corner with no trees. Easy access.

That young man left an impression wherever he went. To double-check the car Marshall drove, I e-mailed another classmate, John Kingston, yesterday. His reply, in full: "I think it was a Gran Torino. I also think it's in the Smithsonian. If it isn't, it should be."

Marshall was one of the smartest people in our class. But you could take the brightest of high school students, any three from that Saturday quiz show that Ken Rice hosts, put them in a car, and before you can say the capital of Botswana, or at least before the night was through, one of the boys likely would be channeling his inner Vin Diesel to the others' urging and delight.

I can joke about the incidents I recalled (and I've barely scratched the surface or the body paint) because nothing happened. I was lucky. But not long after high school, another classmate, Ray Izzo, was a passenger in an accident in which a fellow passenger died. Another, Bobby Russell, spent weeks in a hospital after a late-night crash.

I wasn't surprised to read of a National Institutes of Health study a few years ago that suggested that the region of the brain that inhibits risky behavior is not fully formed until age 25. Or that a Temple University study used a driving-style test to show that young people take greater risks when friends are watching. (Participants played an arcade-style driving game alone and with friends in the room; the younger groups, ages 13 to 22, consistently took more chances with friends around while those older were as cautious alone as they were with friends.)

Pennsylvania is the only state in the Northeast or Mid-Atlantic region without a passenger limit for new teen drivers. According to AAA, all neighboring states -- Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey and New York -- have imposed some limits since 2001.

This bill, which now goes to the state Senate, also prohibits drivers 17 and under from talking on cell phones or texting while driving. Once they hit 18, they can be as reckless as any adult.

Maybe that should be amended. The other day, a woman nearly creamed me in a Downtown crosswalk while she was making a right turn on red and yakking on her cell phone. I'd love to give a young Jimmy Marshall directions to her lawn.