You can't imagine how unpopular I am these days among 16-year-olds with newly minted driver's licenses.

When I suggested that everybody just drive themselves around for a few months until they got their wheels solidly underneath them, there was so much eye rolling you'd have thought you were at a marbles tournament.

"Oh. My. God. Are you psycho, or what?" was the response from one particular 16-year-old, desperate to escape the passenger side of my van. "I think you need to see a therapist. You are obsessed."

I'd have used the adjective "firm," but I saw no need to argue about that, too.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and insurance companies, 16-year-olds are three times more likely to crash than 17-year-olds, who are five times more likely to crash than 18-year-olds.

This isn't because teen-agers are bad drivers. It is because teen-agers are inexperienced drivers. States like Maryland are trying to hold teen-agers back a while so they can gain that experience with a graduated licensing program that requires four months on a learner's permit and 40 hours of supervised driving. Until the age of 18, teens can't drive between midnight and 5 a.m. without adult supervision.

"I feel very strongly that for at least the first six months of a provisional license, a new driver should not have passengers in the car unless the passenger is a parent or another adult who has the maturity and experience to be an instructor and a safe passenger," says Anne S. Ferro, head of the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration.

"Certainly, no other children in the car for the first six months."

Just try to impose this rule on your own new driver, or to her new driver friends, all of whom are under the misconception that a driver's license, still warm from the laminating machine, is marked:

"This child is now free to pile as many friends as she can into a moving vehicle and drive nowhere in particular while changing CDs, chattering on her cell phone and checking her hair in the rear-view mirror every five seconds."

We would be psycho if we let that happen.

Although the six-month rule is not law, it is an official recommendation.

"This is something parents have to place on their kids," says Ferro. "We can't control what goes on the road, but we can control what goes on in a car if we can keep people out of it."

However, most parents are grateful if they can endure the badgering and the half-truths for a month of solitary driving.

"One month to the day," says my friend Linda, "I gave in when Alex pleaded to be allowed to drive a friend to school. He was being Medevacked to a hospital before the opening bell rang."

When she got to the scene, her son's car looked like it had been in a trash compactor, and medical personnel appeared to be pulling a sheet up over his face. She nearly fainted before being told he was still alive.

No wonder the kids think we are crazy. Scenes like that -- just the thought of scenes like that -- make us crazy.

My friend Steve, who sells auto insurance, says you can count on your kids to be pretty cautious in the first month after receiving their licenses. But Steve also says that between three and six months after writing a policy on a new teen driver, he will get a call from the cab of a tow truck.

"You can set your watch by it," Steve says.

Kids think good grades make good drivers, and they will waive a report card or a class rank when defending a new driver. To a certain extent, that is true. Insurance companies do give good student discounts.

Kids will tell you that girls are more "responsible" drivers than boys, offering babysitting as proof. And that is true, too. Insurance companies charge young male drivers much higher premiums, although the gap is narrowing as girls spend more time driving.

But the fact that a kid is good in math or the fact that a girlfriend has never dropped an infant in her charge has nothing to do with how good a driver they will be.

This is about experience. It is about logging time behind the wheel. It is about learning to process the hundreds of bits of information a safe driver records almost without knowing it.

It is about getting comfortable behind the wheel of a car without having to carry on three conversations simultaneously, without the radio blasting, without someone yelling in your ear from the back seat, "OOH. Turn here! Turn here!"

And without a parent hissing through her teeth and bracing against the dashboard at every stop sign. Parents can be a distraction for new drivers, too.

So, this psycho mother is demanding that any new driver have his or her license for six months before driving my precious bundle anywhere.

And the precious bundle will be all alone in the car (without the radio and without her cell phone) for six months before she starts packing it with gal pals.

Check back with me later to see if I endured what I know will be a six-month siege.

In the meantime, absolutely every 16-year-old within reach of my daughter's cell phone is totally furious with me.

I think they are all going to need therapy.