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Need Help?
| Using GPS Tracking with Teen Drivers |
| Wednesday, 07 January 2009 19:15 | |||
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It’s a touching moment when your teenage son or daughter stands next to you and asks that question that all children eventually ask: Will you teach me to drive? Seeing your teen ask for the freedom of driving is a wondrous time in your life. Wondrously terrifying, that is. The first time you sit in the passenger seat as your child slides behind the wheel, turns the key in the ignition, and revs the engine, all of the potential dangers of driving will flash through your mind. We’ve all heard the sobering statistics. Auto accidents are the leading killer of teenagers, and the most inexperienced drivers are at the most risk. You worry for your child’s safety as she begins driving on her own. Ten minutes after the first white-knuckle driving training session, you see her using Facebook, promising all of her friends rides, just as soon as she receives her license. Your worry turns to outright fear as you realize she will have the freedom of driving, friends with which to share the freedom, and a whole new set of dangers to avoid. With a carload of friends, where will she go? More importantly, when she later tells you where she has been, will it match where she actually went? You now have concern over two kinds of dangers: The kind your teen driver might encounter with the potential of accidents and the kind she might encounter from making poor choices about where to travel. You naturally want to trust your child. You want to believe you’ve given her all of the tools and reasoning skills to make the right choices, meaning that when she receives a license to drive, it doesn’t become a license to find trouble. You want to believe she was listening and learning during all of those instructional driving sessions. You want to believe she’ll live up to her promises, that she won’t speed, that she won’t drive aggressively, and that she’ll wear a seat belt. You realize that she has to learn how to avoid trouble on her own at some point. You can’t ride with her and continue the driving lessons from the passenger’s seat for the rest of her life. However, what if you could extend the lessons while she’s still learning to drive on her own, with a gentle reminder that she’s accountable for her driving actions, even when you aren’t sitting in the passenger seat? That’s where technology, such as GPS tracking, enters the picture. A GPS, short for global positioning system, when teamed with the right computer software, can help you track your young driver’s actions, ensuring that she is following your driving rules. Best of all, GPS tracking can do this in a non-intrusive manner. Your teen driver can have the freedom to make the choices she knows she should make, keeping in mind there’s an “eye in the sky” helping encourage accountability. It’s a “peace of mind” technology. Employing GPS Tracking A few different companies offer GPS tracking services for tracking teen drivers. In exploring how these services work, let’s look at one from FindWhere (findwhere.com). You can have a GPS-enabled device either in the vehicle or in your teen’s mobile phone to use the service. The GPS tracking device sends signals through a GPS satellite or a cellular network (or both) to the company’s servers. The software then calculates the driver’s speed and location, providing this information to you through the Internet or your cell phone. Only those with access to your account can access the tracking information through the secure server. With FindWhere, you can have the service set boundaries on the map. If your teen driver goes outside the boundaries, you’ll receive an e-mail or text message. The same notification service is available when the vehicle is speeding. If you’re using GPS tracking through your teen’s cell phone, you even can track the speed when they’re in the car with friends who are driving (or when your husband and his “lead foot” are driving). A GPS tracking solution could even rescue your teen driver from an embarrassing situation that happens to everyone eventually: Forgetting where she parked. With GPS tracking enabled, the monstrous mall parking lot is easy to navigate, pinpointing the lost vehicle’s location. The GPS tracking data is available in real time or in a saved database that you can access at any time. Plans start at about $20 per month, although advanced features can cost $40 per month or more. Some auto insurance carriers will offer a discount if you have a GPS tracking service. Don’t Feel Guilty Finally, if you’re feeling uneasy about tracking the driving habits of your son or daughter using GPS tracking -- thinking that keeping an eye on them from above feels like spying -- don’t feel guilty. Think of it this way: You’re giving your teen driver the freedom of driving with the oversight of accountability that GPS tracking provides. As your teen driver demonstrates that she deserves more freedom, you can dial back the GPS monitoring on your end. Think of it another way: If your parents had such technology available when you started to drive, would they have used it with you? Think -- honestly -- about some of the stunts you pulled as a teen driver, and what your parents would’ve done had they known. With that in mind, employing the eye in the sky with your teen seems like a no-brainer decision. You can’t protect your teen driver from every danger or prevent every bad decision, but a GPS tracking system can help with many of them. And, after you’ve employed the GPS tracking system for your teen driver, you should apologize to your mother and father for all of the driving-related stresses you put them through when you were a teenager, both the ones you told them about ... and the ones you didn’t mention. For more information: FindWhere (703) 444-6100 http://www.findwhere.com
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