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."