Along with an earlier curfew, Barnes proposes limiting passengers in cars driven by 16- and 17-year-olds and raising the driving age in the four most congested metro counties. Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor is seeking tougher driving tests and 40 hours of driver training.

Georgia should do all these things and more to help prevent accidents such as Tuesday's fatal crash. Experts cite inexperience and immaturity as the main factors in wrecks involving adolescent drivers. Sixteen-year-olds die in car accidents at nearly three times the rate of the general population. In 1998, one in five teen drivers in the 16-county metro Atlanta region had wrecks.

Other states have already made the road to a full driver's license a lot longer, with significant results. Three years ago, North Carolina tightened rules on young drivers and set a 9 p.m. curfew. Since then, accidents caused by 16-year-old drivers have fallen 26 percent, and deaths have dropped 29 percent.

New Jersey now requires that teens wait until age 18 to win full driving privileges. Sixteen-year-olds can get learner's permits only after passing a driver-instruction program, written test, vision exam and a road test. They are only allowed to drive when accompanied by adult licensed drivers and are restricted to one unrelated passenger. At 17, teens can obtain a "provisional" license that loosens their curfew, but still restricts their passengers.

Although southern Jersey is far less populated than the northern New York suburbs, the state imposed its new teen driving law statewide. Any increase in the driving age in Georgia should also be comprehensive and not confined to Fulton, Cobb, Gwinnett and DeKalb counties.

In bucking a higher driving age, rural lawmakers contend that teen accidents represent a metro Atlanta problem. Public safety statistics contradict them. In the four metro counties cited by Barnes, there were at least 10 fatal crashes and 17 deaths involving 16-year-old drivers last year. But across the rest of the state there were at least 22 other fatal crashes involving teens that killed 27 people.

Rural legislators also maintain that teen drivers are vital to family farms. Yet, Michigan repealed its loophole for farm teens when it discovered that most of the driving involved traveling to school rather than working on the farm.

A convenient political ploy in the General Assembly is branding an issue "an Atlanta problem" and then ignoring it. If ever there were a good reason for the General Assembly to demonstrate that there is "OneGeorgia," it is the rising death toll among teen drivers.