Did you ever wish there was an angel on the shoulder of your teenager when they are out driving alone? Would you settle for a snitch?
No matter what make, model, or year car your teen is driving, it is possible to install a system that keeps track of how fast, how far, where, and when your teenager is driving.
Advances in technology have made teenage driving safer. Many late model cars have systems that brake in the event of an imminent collision. Some systems warn the driver when the car is about to leave the road. And if you have a late model Ford, Kia, Toyota, Hyundai, Volkswagen, or Lexus, you could have bought a car with an option to track your teen on the road.
Or maybe you couldn’t. It hasn’t been possible to get all the options you want in a car since the middle of 2020. Most parents don’t put their teens behind the wheel of a late-model Lexus, either. For teenage driving safety, most parents need to depend on GPS tracking devices on the aftermarket from companies like GPS Technologies.
Just how serious is the need to keep tabs on teenage driving?
A report on teenage driving by NHTSA, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said that 2,121 people were killed in car crashes involving a driver 15 to 18 years old in 2018, the most recent year for which data are available.
The NHTSA report said that the two-tier, graduated driver licensing rules that every state has adopted reduced the risk of teen auto accidents, but car crashes were still the leading cause of death for youth aged 15 to 18 in the USA. The NHTSA report stopped short of recommending teen driver tracking specifically, but it did come down hard on a recommendation that parents and teens discuss driving regularly. And nothing gets a conversation between parents and teens started faster than a report from a GPS-based teen driver tracking device.
How does teen driver tracking work?
Every car manufactured for sale in the United States since 1996 has an OBDII port. This is a connection for a USB cable to transmit vehicle data. It’s usually installed underneath the steering wheel. The OBDII port is what your mechanic logs into to “see what the computer says” about vehicle performance. This is also where GPS technologies can mount a teen tracking device.
Your teen driver tracking device comes with its SIM card already installed. It’s ready to activate as soon as you get it. The teen tracking device has its own GPS antenna and transmits data through a dedicated mobile app.
Every time your teenager drives too fast, slams on the brakes, make a sharp turn, or has an unfortunate incident on the road, your teen driver tracker will register the maneuver and send a push notification to your smartphone. But that’s not all.
With a teen driver tracker, you can monitor your teen’s location in real-time. You can get a notification when your teen drives to a sketchy location that you have made off-limits. You get a notification when your car is idling or parked.
You can set your teen driver tracking device to send you a notification when a preset number of miles have been traveled, or when your teen drives their car outside a “fence” you have set for them to stay close to home.
If you share a car with your kids, you can turn off monitoring when you are using the car. And you can usually install a teen driver tracker without any tools.
What are the benefits of a teen driver tracker?
The NHTSA has tested a “teen driving safe car” that includes teen driver trackers and a warning system. Tests for the car found that:
- Knowing that their car is fitted with a teen driver tracker makes teens about 60 percent less likely to drive 15 miles per hour or more over the speed limit at night.
- Knowing that their car is fitted with a teen driver tracker makes teens about 50 percent less likely to drive 15 miles per hour or more over the speed limit during the day.
- Fitting a car with a teen driver tracker reduces the number of swerves to the right or left at speeds greater than 10 miles an hour by more than 90 percent.
- Fitting a car with a teen driver tracker drastically reduced incidents of speeding when teens drove with other teen passengers.
It won’t come as any surprise to parents that about 20 percent of teens surveyed said they were “extremely dissatisfied,” they absolutely hated being tracked, or that a majority reported that they drove just fine with being tracked. It won’t come as any surprise to parents that up to 43 percent of teens confronted with evidence of speeding protested that the speedometer in the tracking device just had to be wrong.
But the simple fact is that driving slower, especially when teens have other teens as passengers, and fewer risky maneuvers save lives.
Should you get a teen driver tracker?
GPS teen driver tracking devices can never replace parental supervision. They can’t keep track of other important factors like peer pressure to take unnecessary risks, alcohol, and drug use. But they can open the door to constructive conversations with your teen about driver safety. And they can help you find your teen when you are worried about their safety on the road.
