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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!"
SMS - 1:11:05: Jacob is driving 110mph
SMS - 1:11:18: Jacob is driving 120mph
SMS - 1:11:25: Jacob is driving 140mph
SMS - 1:11:29: Jacob is driving 180mph
SMS - 1:11:32: Jacob is driving 220mph
SMS - 1:11:33: Jacob is driving 0mph
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?
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
that will get the hair on the back of your folks neck up! :P
moo
Put your phone on a plane and send it fasttrack two states over, and get someone to send it back.
"I was speeding, dad? 1800mph you say, in the saturn?"
Don't know what it is like elsewhere, but here in the UK: - a teen turn off their mobile phone?? I think not :-)
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.
Where's the Kaboom?
There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom.
It's about time these youngin's learned that it's about cornering, not speed.
Teens KNEW the cameras were there and also recording their voices and they STILL would do really stupid stuff, speeding, turning around and talking to passengers while driving, and just basically driving recklessly. No surprises.
They are just so absorbed in "their" worlds that nothing else matters.
I like microcars
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.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
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.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
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.
"We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. " Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Go to a movie theater that uses cell phone jammers ONE TIME and you lose the car!
All of this information will be transmitted in real time to a giant government supercluster, which will essentially be a cluster of 8192 clusters, each of which will consist of 128,000 IBM zSeries 1000 computers. These computers will run complex psychological, psychiatric, medical, legal, and financial algorithms, which will use actuarial formulas and methods to compute the past trends of behavior and state, as well as the probability of possible future behaviors and states of the subject.
These technologies will be used for many purposes, such as law enforcement, the prediction of crimes and the assignment of mandatory psychiatric and criminal help before possible crimes occur, the automatic management and categorical assignment of financial transactions, automatic tax revenue deduction from each transaction, the monitoring of the location and activities of subjects, the prediction of future traffic patterns (which will be used by automatic automobile pilot systems to select faster routes, as the vehicles will be driven by computer, and by civil engineers to select locations for expansion or for new highways), and many other uses.
Furthermore, the chip will contain storage to be used for the maintainance of the subject's medical, legal, and financial information throughout its life.
This would allow parents to make sure their teens don't drive too fast, even though the vehicles will be driven by computer, as explained above.
Here in Norway, we've got Location Services (often referred to as POS). Any content provider receives the following information connected to an end users location: latitude, longitude, start- and end-angel, inner and outer radius, region, municipal-number and county.
The system works up to 300m accurate in city centres, but might be as much as 35km accurate in rural areas (since there are less antennas that can be used in triangulating the signal).
Information about the end user is not available content providers, since those content providers receive only a unique static id for each customer that orders a Location Service.
A service using POS would be a lot better than a service where you rely on a specific kind of cellphone being on, not in use and equipped with a specific Java application (of which you have no clue what it in fact does, since it was installed for you).
The best thing of all: with POS users have to specifically approve requests for any content provider. So no sneaky applications that parents can install on mobile phones.
The invasion of privacy "offered" by the Teens Arrive Alive system should scare any sane American away from the system, assuming that the fact that it comes recommended by the former chief of military ops in Iraq wasn't enough to make you scream and run for your life.
In God We Trust, Others We Monitor
I can just see all the nerds have competions to see who can get their cell phones to report the highest velocities. I can see every thing rocket motor powered roller skates in the parking lot to spud-guns across the football field.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Turn off phone, pop out battery, then say the battery died.
Well, Johnny, I guess if you can't be responsible enough to keep your cell charged, then you aren't responsible enough to be driving my car. Your ten speed is still in the garage, I'll drive you down to the bike store to get a patch kit.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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?
Please help metamoderate.
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.
"Gee, Dad, the GPS feature on my phone must not work in the car."
No electrons were harmed creating this post, though some may have been subjected to electrical and/or magnetic fields.
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!
sup
To achieve an appearance of speed, you move physical matter? Your Geek-fu is sadly lacking, young padawan.
Copy data to clone the phone to people nationwide, and you can flip nodes on and off to simulate cell-boundary crossing. With prearrangement, you could make the phone appear to break lightspeed.
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.
Failing to learn from history dooms you to repeat it.
sort of governer in your teen's car?
You goo too faaast. Slow down or I will kill youh.
--Ahnold
I worked for a cell phone company (GSM) and I once visited the main network control room and the operators showed me a software that allowed them to triangulate the position of any of their costumer by simply using the antennas of the network.
Also if I wanted to log the speed of a car when someone is using it, I'll think of a better idea. I'll hide a training/running watch with GPS in the trunk; Nobody can turn it off, no monthly subscription, you will be able to export the data on a computer and you will be the only one who can access the data.
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
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.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
This is obvious a sinister plot by some evil super-villan!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
If the kids go faster than a certain speed, say 50Mph or so, the stereo shuts down. That way they can either cruise along and listen to their music, or they can go fast and not have that 300 beats-per-minute tune mess with their concentration.
This message has been ROT-13 encrypted twice for higher security.
Anyone who has used GPS knows it won't work with a layer of sheet metal between it and the GPS satellites.
Just keep the cell phone near the center of the car up near the roof. It will be blocked from GPS signals but still get cellular signals because they come in horizontally through the windows.
I predict a market for headliner mounted cell phone holders will develop.
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.
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.
First, let me say that I have been paying attention to Boortz since the days when his biggest cause was the Noise Abatement policy at the PDK airport in Atlanta, early 90's I guess. Lately though, I sometimes find myself thinking I am listening to Limbaugh. sigh I have heard him speak about this issue on his radio program. First is the premise that if teens want adult rights, then with them come adult responsibilites and sentencing guidlines. To me, this begs the question of WHY the State should grant this right in the first place, when it clearly sees a 16 year old as something less than an adult in many other areas. Like voting, alcohol and liability. A 16 year old kid can't vote, and therefore has no one representing him and his place on the roads he travels on, the usage of which he is taxed for every time he fills up the tank. The Colonists had a term for this curiously unfair situation, but I can't remember what it was. What if the law were changed to allow children to drive at the age of six? "And remember young man, you will be treated as an adult and will go to big kid prison if you do something stupid!" That sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? I think so too, even for a sixteen year old. Adolescence is a form of mental illness, this is well documented. We put some of the most deranged people around out on the roads and then complain about how they perform? Kids don't respond to the threat of possible future punishment nearly as well as they repsond to seeing nothing but good examples all around them. I live in the Atlanta area, like Neal, and this is no laid back putt putt on down the road at your own pace kind of driving scene we are sporting here. It is fast, it is rude and very often - it is amazingly stupid. What example does a kid learning to drive in Atlanta see? He sees Speed Limit signs every 1/2 mile, and drivers violating that Limit every 11 feet. When John Law comes rolling up from behind, they do slow down, to 75mph, still 20mph over the limit. What does this tell our young Buck about the Law? Turn signals are entirely optional from what I can tell. I can't imagine the non-use of them being ticketed in this city. It's like speeding, where would they start? Every year, they should just mail a 100.00 ticket to every driver in the Atlanta area. The only people who seem to obey the speed limit in this town are the elderly and foreigners. Most good people have sense not to scream at elderly drivers, on a good day at least. But the foreigners doing 55 in the right lane are lambasted. They are following the letter of the Law. The Law in their country might have them stripped to the waist at the head of an exit ramp for all to see. Forced to wear a Mercury hat while enduring the torture of a good caning, they pay the ultimate price for their "heinous alactrity". And that's just for 1kmph over in Singapore. I'll bet they don't have alot of teen driving problems in Singapore. We need Traffic Law reform. Nobody likes the Speed Limits, even at these newer, more heinous levels. That much is obvious. If the entire country is speeding, who exactly, in the drippin' gonorhea is being represented when the Speed Limits get set? We need Drivers License Requirement Reform. I hold a Private Pilot's license, as, again, does Neal (pee shiver). I never did much with my ticket after I got it, I enrolled in Flight School with the hopes of assuaging an hysterical fear of commercial airtravel. It didn't work. I did, however, learn one thing: speed is directly proportional to the rate at which "factors" can accelerate you towards your doom. Factors such as experience, weather, equipment and fatigue can converge in the most insidious of ways in the world of aviation. And on the road. Driver Education should require controlled four point drifts while Jet Li punches your head through the moonroof, not just the cursory glance to make sure that Applicant does indeed have a face. You can't have a Driver's License without a face after all. Adults, quit bemoaning Teens, you are involved and the cause of most fatal accidents, and yet you aren't excused by your youth.
Having a 4 year old boy and 2 year old girl, I have been worried about what *I* did and could have done at young ages that my mother knew nothing about, and given that I am big on letting my children see the Internet in all it's glory, I do NOT want them seeing some things (like beheadings, scat porn, etc). I also, however, have been comforted by the belief that by the time they get old enough for all that, there will be all kinds of ways to preemptively prevent them from seeing certain things, as well as monitor what they have seen in perfect clarity. (I still am worried about what they will see at friends' houses). Anyway, one thing I thought about in regards to going out and about when they are 14 to 17 was indeed a cell phone that go unanswered or the GPS is disabled, after a review of the cause, then non-emotional restrictions will apply.
While I won't have a bumper sticker on their cars, I will welcome the GPS that not only tells me their speed, but as well where they are at any given moment, or where they were at any given time.
"Artificial Intelligence usually beats real stupidity."