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Think of the movie classic, "American Graffiti." Now, add $4 gas to the plot.

Imagine how dull the movie might have played if - instead of cruising the night away in those cool cars - Curt, Steve, John and the Toad had been stranded in some forlorn parking lot with no gas in the tank and precious little change in their pockets.

Cars have always been a suburban teen's ticket to freedom. Now, steeply rising gas prices are throwing a roadblock in the way.

Rachel Forbes, 17, of Wrentham, says she drives at least an hour each weekday.

Besides the 30-minute commute to and from Bishop Feehan High School in Attleboro, Forbes is an avid equestrian and has a horse stabled in Millis. That adds another 20 minutes of daily driving. Weekends add more mileage, since friends from school are not necessarily neighbors.

"Now, we try to stay close by," Forbes said. "If someone has a house way out somewhere, it's harder to get everyone to go there. And it's not always convenient for people to carpool because everyone needs to leave at different times and drive to different towns."

It was a different world not so long ago.

Libby Renner, 22, of Plainville, recalls hours of driving packed into the weekends she spent as a student at King Philip Regional High School.

"Driving around with your friends was a social activity because there was not much else to do in the area after 10 p.m.," she said. "We drove around just for fun - no where to go most of the time.

"Maybe we would throw three dollars to the driver, but it wasn't really a big deal. If we had today's gas prices when I was in high school, I probably would have just sat around and done nothing."

Renner got her driver's license in December 2002, when the average price of gas in Massachusetts was less than $1.60 - affordable even for teenagers with part-time jobs.

Today, teens earning the minimum wage need to work half an hour just to pay for a gallon of gas.

"Gas prices are always in the back of my mind and cause stress everyday," said recent King Philip grad Luke Darling, 18, of Plainville.

And the pain goes beyond his social life. "Soon enough, I'm going to have college loans, but gas prices seem to get higher and higher," Darling said.

And that ticket to freedom? It's already been punched.

"We were excited to have our independence and freedom, the ability to go out without having our parents cart us around," Renner said.

Independence today might mean a couple of spins around the block. Gone are impromptu summer trips to Providence, Boston, even Cape Cod.

"We don't take day trips to Six Flags very often," Forbes said.

The high cost of gas might not be without a couple of pluses, however.

"Police departments everywhere are looking more positively at the benefits of expensive gas," said Lloyd Albert with AAA Southern New England.

For one thing, drivers might actually be slowing down.

Albert says he sticks to 58 mph on the highway, and has noticed that others are slowing, too.

Teens statistically have been found to be the fastest and most reckless of drivers, so it's no accident that car crashes are the leading cause of death in that age group.

If those gory driver's ed films don't teach young drivers a lesson, maybe real-life economics will.