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AREA SCHOOL AUTHORITIES kept schools closed last week rather than endanger children on ice-patched roads. Safety also motivates a bill in the General Assembly that would ban cell-phone use by teenagers who are just learning to drive. The House Transportation Committee has passed the measure, but word is that the full House, which previously defeated its own bill, could very shortly kill the Senate version.

Since 2005, a ban on cell-phone use by novice drivers has been on the National Transportation Safety Board's "most wanted list" of safety enhancements. That view is echoed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, whose research finds that phone-gabbing drivers can experience "inattention blindness."

That may be what caused a crash described by 16-year-old Melissa Starnes of Suffolk. Bill sponsor Sen. Jay O'Brien, R-Fairfax, invited Miss Starnes to Richmond to tell her story: On a summer evening in 2005, she was a passenger in a car driven by a teen-age girlfriend who was talking on her cell phone to her boyfriend. After pausing at an intersection, her friend obliviously pulled into the path of a dump truck. Miss Starnes is recovering from her injuries, but her friend died that night.

Opponents of the bill might respond that one tragedy hardly demands legislative action. But school officials kept schools closed this week because they knew that one death would be too many. Moreover, Miss Starnes' story is merely illustrative of a wider-spread hazard.

A joint study completed last April by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute and NHTSA found that 80 percent of vehicular crashes between August 2004 and August 2005 among Beltway commuters were caused by some form of driver inattention, cell-phone use being the most common form. A survey released last month by Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. reported that 73 percent of all drivers talk on their cell phones while driving--but the percentage jumps to 85 percent among those 18 to 27. And a study presented last June by the University of Utah discovered no difference between the impairment of drivers using cell phones and those with a blood-alcohol content at the legal intoxication level of 0.08 percent.

Amid all this evidence, motor-vehicle crashes remain the leading cause of death in the United States for 15- to 20-year-olds, with an average of 122 dying each week--tantamount to an airliner crash. If the commonwealth reduced that national count even by a few simply by banning cell-phone use by young drivers, would that be worthwhile? Or would a lawmaker such as Del. Jack Welch, R-Virginia Beach, continue to impede progress by cutely attempting to amend the bill to include eating, smoking, applying makeup, and interacting with pets while driving?

Nor is this issue about usurping parental responsibilities. It is about keeping more teens around long enough to become experienced drivers and responsible adults.