Safety Tips

How To Keep Tabs on Your Teen Driver
Is Close Monitoring Good Parenting or Privacy Invasion?
By Jayne O'Donnell, Contributor
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Thanks to commercial satellites, digital memory devices, miniature cameras and GPS tracking, it's easier than ever to keep tabs on your teen driver.

But should you? Does using GPS to track a teen driver represent a violation of the trust that should exist between you and your teen? Is it an invasion of your teen's privacy? Or is it responsible parenting?

The answers are yes, yes and yes.

Teenagers tend to respond by driving more safely with the devices, says J. Peter Kissinger, CEO of the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. "People raise questions like, 'Does that destroy the trust?' It probably depends on the relationship you have with your teenager."

The issue didn't get that far in the home of former National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) chief Jeffrey Runge, who says these so-called black boxes were rejected when Runge brought home the device to put in the car his teenage son drove. He said his wife resisted because it didn't "demonstrate very much trust" and won the argument.

Still, Runge, like most other highway safety experts, says the devices are important both for monitoring drivers and teaching good driving skills.

While accident data shows teens and their teenage passengers are by far the most accident-prone group, that isn't the case when Mom or Dad is riding along. A monitoring tool may be the "next best thing" to having a parent riding shotgun, though few teens are likely to admit that.

NHTSA data shows that unaccompanied 16- and 17-year-olds crash nine times more often than adults. And with Mom or Dad out of the car, seatbelt use plummets to less than 40 percent of the national average.

Rusty Weiss is director of the consumer division at DriveCam, which sells onboard cameras to companies for the auto fleets driven by their employees. DriveCam now hopes to sell the cameras to parents for use in monitoring their teen drivers. During a pilot project with teens insured by American Family Insurance, Weiss says parents were often shocked to see how their kids drive when they aren't in the car. A frequent problem: Teens take corners too fast and have to brake so late and hard that their safety belts lock up.

When his company shares video from teens' cars with parents, "parents couldn't recognize the risky behaviors," says Weiss. Still, Weiss thinks "having the camera prevents some of the craziest stuff — the 'if I got caught doing this I'd never be able to drive again' stuff."

The Low-Tech Route
Once you accept that keeping an eye on your teen's driving can prevent such risky behavior, the next step is figuring out how to do it. For starters, don't underestimate good old-fashioned low-tech monitoring. For example, have some idea how many miles your teen's usual trips should cover and keep a log of your odometer. (If you have an E-Z Pass or FastTrak transponder affixed to the vehicle your teen drives, you can easily check your account.) To check if your teen is reporting his driving habits accurately, just do the math. Teens who drive much farther than they are supposed to are probably using roads that are unfamiliar or should be off limits, putting them at greater risk.

Another option: a bumper sticker that urges motorists to report bad driving to a toll-free number. The voicemail is forwarded to your cell phone. Drawbacks are obvious — practical jokers, for example — but the system is fast and cheap at Report My Teen.

High-Tech Driver Monitors
Some more advanced systems marry different technologies, while others allow parents to do it themselves.

• State-of-the-art pedometers and watches come equipped with GPS devices, so that exercise-conscious adults can log distances and terrain covered on their jogs or walks for upload to their PCs. Charge its battery, set the GPS device and leave it under the car seat. Collect it when the car is returned. You'll get the same info on your teen's travels.



• Teens' cell phones can also be equipped with GPS to keep them under the watchful eye of the satellites. Parents can log into online sites to follow a vehicle's position and speed. This, of course, depends on teens keeping their cell phone with them and not letting the batteries run down. Try Teen Arrive Alive for more details. Also, check with your wireless carrier. Nextel, Sprint and Verizon have recently begun similar programs.



• A "black box" similar to devices used to track emergency vehicles and commercial trucks lets parents monitor teen driving in real-time through a laptop or cell phone. The system, which blends cell phone technology with GPS, can be preset to snitch by sending automatic alerts when a young driver is driving too fast, too far or somewhere he's not meant to be. The system also records speed, miles covered and other driving details on a memory card that can be downloaded later.