Using GPS to Track Teens

jmoloug1 writes An article at CBSNews that describes a new service available to parents. It uses cell phone GPS to track how fast the teens are driving and then automatically sends an alert back to the parents when a certain limit has been exceeded. Bad idea for stupid parents who are going to be outwitted by their kids just turning off the phones? Best of all, it's endorsed by our former chief of military ops in Iraq!"

Comments

So What?

[the_mad_poster]

And, I should care... why? Am I supposed to load up my side by side and start booby trapping the hallways to stop the government enforcers or something? Hellloooo, cluestick: who fucking cares? Parents get to keep tabs on their kids, big news. Whoopdy doo. How is this YRO?

Re:So What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Police can monitor any cell phone at anytime.
And set up speed traps accordingly.

Or better yet, just mail tickets to the
phone owners. Most will pay; those that
challenge them will have their tickets
dropped.

Is that enough YRO for you?

Re:So What?

[Tassach]

How is this YRO?

Because if parents can track their kids, so can other people. YEs, I'd like to know if my son was speeding, but I *don't* want some for-profit company having access to that data and (for example) selling it to my insurance company or automatically calling the police.

That said, as a parent I'd NEVER subscribe to this service. When I allow my children to drive, it will because they've demonstrated to me that they are mature enough to handle the responsibilty of driving a car. If I don't trust them enough to let them go out on their own, then they're not going out. Inferring that I have to spy on my kids with an electronic beacon is insulting to both me and them.

Re:So What?

[Anonymous Coward]

What part of "slippery slope" do you not understand?

Or better, what part of "in loco parens"
do you not understand?

Re:So What?

[Forbman]

My kids are my responsibility.

My insurance company cares about two things: that I pay my premiums, and that if they can find any way to avoid having to pay out (or finding someone else to get the $$$ from), they will do it.

Some of the ways make sense: stupid people should have to pay stupid person insurance rates. Insurance fraud needs to be tracked down and cost-effectively reduced for all sorts of reasons.

Some of it doesn't: the insurance company has a "right" to track people so it can more easily justify it shouldn't have to pay out for their stupid activities, which they agreed to cover in the first place?

The cops? Well, from a human perspective, if I had to be a first-responder at stupid driver accidents all the time, I would want to try and do something to help prevent it, if only because of the sheer stupidity involved, but realizing that people, even people who think they're doing the right things (like driving 45mph in the left lane of a 60mph highway when there are no other cars around...), I would have to figure out that perhaps the best way is to NOT do too much. Stupid people will always figure out ways to circumvent things. Look at how many people STILL don't wear seatbelts.

Re:So What?

[Facekhan]

Aaah more parents living vicariously through their children the way Kim Jung Il lives vicariously through his millions of slave-citizens also under constant surveilance.

Why not underwear that can tell when teens are sexually aroused. That ought to stop sex in its tracks. Or condom packages that send an sms to the parents (and Walmart) letting them know its their kid's lucky day.

If parents are too busy to raise their kids by actual physical presence then they should not have them. And parents of teenagers would do well to remember what kinds of things they got into at their age and there is a very high probability that little Johnnie will be by both nature and nurture not much different than his parents in his adolescent behavior.

Re:So What?

[jcr]

Its OK for you to track your child

If by "OK", you mean "legal", you're probably right. If you mean "OK" as in "a reasonable thing to do", then I must disagree. I'm quite alarmed at the many recent encroachments on their civil rights that children are forced to accept today (drug testing to be on the chess team, for example) because if kids grow up acquiescing to this kind of intrusion, they won't object when the congress decides to make it mandatory.

-jcr

Re:So What?

[ScrewMaster]

Unless the teen looks under the dash and knows what to look for, no one is the wiser.

I would not have been that teen, and neither would most of my friends. If my parents had ever tried that on me I would have found the little bastard all right. Fortunately I learned to drive in the seventies long before this kind of thing was even a gleam in some engineer's eye. But my father was too much of a gentleman to have ever foisted something like that on me, although as an electronics engineer with a Ph.D in nuclear physics he could certainly have done it, even way back then. I agree with the parent ... either trust your children to drive ... or don't. There's not a lot middle ground here since either you're trustworthy enough to drive ... or you're not. Any offspring sufficiently untrustworthy to warrant the installation of such a device probably shouldn't have a driver's license in the first place. Responsibility is commensurate with the degree of risk: cars are as dangerous as handguns in terms of the number of accidental deaths they cause, but we let sixteen-year-olds drive cars. We don't let them carry guns.

Honestly, for most teenagers driving isn't a requirement, it's a luxury: primarily a social one at that. In cases where children have to work just for the family to have enough money to eat it would be different, of course: but survival dictates generally ensure that people in that position grow up fast. They aren't the target market for a teenager tracking system. Rich people don't care either: if their kid totals the car they buy him or her a new one (which explains why so many rich kids are jerks.) This is for the upper-middle-class yuppie type that is too busy counting his money and maneuvering for his next promotion to be bothered with actual parenting.

Raise your kid right and you won't need to worry about putting a GPS tracker in his car. Too much of modern American society has parents willingly giving up their legitimate duties to technology and government. It began with the television (that mind-robbing electronic babysitter) and now we've come to a point where we have so little faith in our ability to teach our children, and so little trust in them, that we need to track their every move.

My own feeling is that if this kind of thing becomes popular, all we will be doing is raising a generation that will be completely unconcerned about such trivial little issues as personal privacy. I'm sure our government would have no objection to that state of affairs.

Re:So What?

[iminplaya]

I understand you point. There is a problem in that you are liable for what ever your kid does until he's 18. So I kinda can understand some parents paranoia over what their kids are doing. The slippery slope is very steep here. This thing will become mandatory for everybody if enough people accept it. Just like the 55mph speed limit started out as a voluntary measure, becoming mandatory later. This is definitely about your rights, online and offline.

Re:So What?

[Anonymous Coward]

That said, as a parent I'd NEVER subscribe to this service.

Don't worry, soon you will not have to be bothered with the cumbersom and expensive chore of subscription; we'll take care of it!

See you soon!

Your friends,
Donald Rumsfeld and James Loy

What action will parents take?

[Ronald Dumsfeld]

This is stupid. Here's why: What will the average parent do when they get an alert by phone that their child is 20mph over the speed limit?

They'll phone them.

Stupid.

I say good.

[grishnav]

It's about time these youngin's learned that it's about cornering, not speed.

man i dodged a bullet

[colmore]

gps trackers, electronically tagged drivers licenses, government IDed kegs, drug tests for sports teams and nearly every minimum wage job ...

They're really trying to legislate the fun out of being young. I'm glad to be in my 20s right now.

Re:No, it's a great idea

[Anonymous Coward]

My children are grown now, but as a successful parent and grandparent, my answer would be, "Turn off the phone ONE TIME, and you'll lose the car." See, it's simple.

I know that my children were smarter than me; most children are smarter than their parents. But parents still control the money (read: car, insurance, food, clothing, shelter, etc.).

Why is it a bad idea if they turn off their phones

[deft]

First of all, it might be a fate worse than death for any teen these days to not have their phone on, but as a parent, thats an easy hurdle to get over.

If the phone goes off, it is assumed that they were speeding. If they complain, so be it, they dont need to drive. It's not hard to put your foot down, it just seems hard for parents to discipline these days.

Lack of Parenting

[nodehopper]

This sounds like a perfect solution for those parents who have let the TV babysit their kids for years. They rely on content filters to monitor the kids internet usage and only gauge what the kids listen to and watch based upon the current rating system. Now they don't even have to ask where the kids are going. This sounds like another tool for un-involved, distant and lazy parents to pretend like they care about their kids, but it only sends the message that "we don't trust you". What happened to talking and communicating to kids, teaching them right from wrong and then trusting them to do the right thing.

Re:No, it's a great idea

[realdpk]

Go to a movie theater that uses cell phone jammers ONE TIME and you lose the car!

this addresses teen driving safety how?

[SuperBanana]

How does this address teen driving safety?

Folks- repeat after me. Not Speeding != Safely driving.

Teens have a lot of problems with situational awareness- ie where other cars are around them. This is aggrivated by distractions in the car with them; teenage passengers, unlike adults, aren't as good as recognizing when they shouldn't talk to the driver. MA state law places restrictions on who can be in the car with young drivers.

Teens have a lot of problems with understanding what a car can and cannot do. They've probably never slammed on the brakes to see how slowly their car stops. They've certainly never been on a skidpad. They have no idea what ABS is for (neither do most adults; it's directional stability, NOT 'stopping as fast as possible'). They've never been taught when to steer around obstacles and when to brake for them, and certianly have never been asked to put into practice avoidance skills.

Teens are often given (or buy) the hand-me-down car, with old safety technology, bad tires/brakes/steering. There are exceptions, but it's rarely the rich kid who got a new small commuter car with 8 airbags and traction control who ends up splattered on a tree. It's the kid who works at the supermarket and drives a +15 year old car he/she bought for $500 and whose parents can't afford to help him/her keep it in excellent shape. Nevermind the safety ratings on inexpensive 0-20 year old US-made small cars is absolutely atrocious. Teens also like SUVs.

So basically: they need to focus and have situational awareness, they need to have a based-on-experience understanding of the capabilities of THEIR vehicle and basic car handling techniques, and they need to be driving reliable, safe cars.

Speed comes from a lack of the understanding of the implications (stopping distance skyrockets with speed, for example) and consequences (survivability in a collision plummets, for example). Policing them, just as policing adults, does not solve the root cause. Further- everyone else around them is going to be doing well over the speed limit, so not only are we being hypocritical, but they will be more of a hazard on the road to themselves and others!

I happen to find it hilarious, given light of recent events, that an automotive safety company has a Iraq war leader as their spokesman. Any comments about armour for Humvees, Mr. Franks?

Give me an insurance break

[iosmart]

In my opinion, if they could arrange some sort of insurance discount, the system would sell like CRAZY. I think right now it's at least $2000/year for a teen driver.

Speeds alone don't really tell a whole lot

[qqaz]

So, let's say I receive a message saying little Billy is going 60 mph. Is this in some residential area with a 25 mph speed limit, or is it on a highway with a 60 mph speed limit?

I don't know!

Bad parents

[sicking]

Wow, has parents really become that bad that they don't even trust their kids to drive. In that case they deserve to get what's comming to them when their kids turn off the phone and speed anyway.

Not that this really affects me. I'm too grown up by now (and I don't have crappy parents), and I certainly don't plan on using this on my kids.

Re:It's a joke!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, there was some dumbass in Cali who managed to `liberate' a tank from a mil. base. He proceeded to try to knock down an overpass and failed miserably, causing minor damage and getting himself wedged between the pillars to wait for SWAT in his heavily-armored holding cell.

So, let's say that the 69.5 ton tank going at 30mph (this is a reasonably low speed for an on-road abrams, reflecting the stupidity of its operator; ref. wikipedia) hit the pillar and transferred its force in one second (presumably, much more would have indicated buckling of the pillar, which didn't occur). This is (using ridiculous units) 69.5*2000*30**2=125,100,000 force. Now, take a 1 ton sport car at 225mph: 2000*225**2=101,250,000 force. Comparable.

Yes, I know, it's very crude; I'm in no way a physicist, but I'm convinced that the pillar wins easily against the ferrari.

GPS speed tracking ureliability

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Hasn't their been lots of problems with GPS reliability. Positions chaning wildly, especially right after someone goes in a tunnel, etc, etc.

The kid could be doing 45 in a 45 and the system comes up with the following:

13:00:01: 45 MPH Northbound
13:00:02: 105 MPH Northbound
13:00:03: 103 MPH Southbound
13:00:04: 90 MPH Northbound
13:00:05: 88 MPH Northbound
13:00:06: 45 MPH Northbound

Notice the nice average speed of 45 MPH Northbound - this is a logical failure mode for GPS where some of the intermediate positions are scrambled. Please, no one tell me the kid could actually be doing that, unless his car can stop and reverse at over 9G's.

Of course you can filter the data to eliminate this, but how to do avoid false negatives. Such as the kid ripping up and down the freeway at 105 and then driving off at the speed limit.

GPS positioning needs to be made better. Joggers using it to track their speed are very annoyed by the inaccuracies.

Maybe we need an urban positioning system based of triangulation of signal strengths and time delays of transmitters (such as cell towers). That might have made a better decision than GPS or a good backup for it for the E911 cell phone location system.

Here's an idea..

[EvilStein]

Just teach people how to drive before they can get their license.

I cannot find one single public school in the Bay Area that still teaches drivers ed. Getting a license is *TOO EASY* in California. You don't even have to speak English - they'll give you the test in your native language.

I say that before anyone gets a license, they must undergo no less than 16 hours of classroom training and defensive driving courses. If they pass, they get a license. If not, more training. There are just far too many people driving around here that really have no idea how to drive, and it's dangerous.

Forget this GPS tracking & tattle-tale electronics crap - just LEARN TO DRIVE.

God! We're putting a technology "solution" on a problem that has such obviously superior solutions - again.

The company founder is stupid

[Wolfier]

He said "it is the right and responsibility" to know where they're going and how fast.

Gimme a break. If you need to know these things about your kids, there's something wrong how you brought them up.

It's too late to track them.