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When the state House of Representatives debates teen driving this month, critics will maintain that the proposed new restrictions penalize "good" kids. It's a sentiment shared by House Speaker Tom Murphy (D-Bremen).

"I'm not willing to punish the good teenagers who would be good drivers . . . because there are some teenagers that wouldn't be good drivers," says Murphy.

However, it's not a matter of good drivers vs. bad. It's experience and maturity vs. inexperience and immaturity. And that immaturity is killing Georgia's teen drivers in tragic numbers. 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 was involved in a wreck.

The teen driving bill sponsored by Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor, a Democrat, and state Sen. Phil Gingrey, a Republican from Marietta, would deny full driving privileges to teenagers until they've had time to mature and gain vital experience. The bill passed the Senate and now moves to the House. Here are the provisions in the legislation likely to spur debate:

- Curfew: Taylor and Gingrey want 16-year-old drivers off the road by 10 p.m. and 17-year-olds home by midnight. Now, the curfew for both is 1 a.m. House members will urge exemptions for 16-year-olds driving home from jobs or community, school or religious events. If approved, those broad exemptions essentially negate the curfew.

In defending exemptions, especially for athletes after games, state Sen. Bart Ladd (R-Doraville) predicted more accidents as kids speed home to meet the deadline. The opposite occurred in North Carolina. After North Carolina imposed a 9 p.m. curfew, the crash rate for 16-year-olds fell by almost 50 percent.

Yes, the curfew will force parents out of their pajamas and into their cars to pick up kids from practices, games or movies. But as Vickie Boudreau, a mother of three, told a Senate committee, "I'll be inconvenienced. I don't mind. That's my job."

- Boudreau's 17-year-old daughter, April Ledford, died in October when a car driven by a classmate at Newton High School crashed. Speed was a factor in the accident, and Boudreau has become an advocate for more training and more limits on teen drivers.

- Passenger limits: During the Senate debate on the teen driving bill, senators expressed misgivings about limiting 16- and 17-year-olds to one unrelated passenger. Senate Minority Leader Eric Johnson (R-Savannah) said his own 16-year-old, newly licensed in December, now drives two friends to school each morning. What would happen to his car pool?

The senator ought to be questioning whether children should commute to school with a brand-new teen driver. Novices shouldn't be honing their driving skills in morning rush hour, least of all with two pals in the car.

Passenger restrictions clearly save young lives. A study by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health concluded that the most likely drivers to be involved in a fatal accident were teen drivers with three or more pals along for the ride. Those drivers are seven times more likely to have a fatal accident than middle-aged drivers.

Even one passenger increases the odds of teen drivers dying behind the wheel. The research found that 16-year-olds carrying one passenger were 39 percent more likely to get killed than those driving alone. That increased to 86 percent with two passengers and 182 percent with three or more.

Two-tier system: The House may endorse a system that lays down more lax rules for teens outside metro Atlanta. Yet 16-year-olds in rural Georgia and Atlanta's outlying suburbs had higher fatality rates in 1999 than their metro peers.

In 1999, the fatality rate among 16-year-old drivers in the five largest counties was 44.8 per 100,000 licensed drivers. In rural Georgia, where road hazards are supposedly far fewer, the fatality rate for that age group was 82.1 per 100,000 licensed 16-year-old drivers, nearly twice that of the metro area. In fact, Wheeler and Lanier counties in South Georgia are among those with the highest fatal teen driving accident rates.

- Raising the driving age: Gov. Roy Barnes wants to make teenagers wait until they're 17 to drive without adult supervision, as New Jersey requires. Teenagers would get learner's permits at 15, but drive with an adult or guardian until they're at least 17. Barnes fended off rural opposition by confining his proposal to Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb and

Gwinnett counties and the 14 counties contiguous to them. Again, any change in the driving age ought to be statewide since teen driving deaths are a statewide problem. The lives of rural teenagers are no less valuable than those in the metro area.

As House members study the driving age, they ought to remember the ruckus 20 years ago over raising the drinking age. That law -- adopted in response to the number of teens dying in drunken-driving accidents -- is credited with saving thousands of young lives. The House now has the opportunity to do the same.