Ford To Introduce Restrictive Car Keys For Parents

thesandbender writes "Ford is set to release a management system that will restrict certain aspects of a car's performance based on which key is in the ignition. The speed is limited to 80, you can't turn off traction control, and you can't turn the stereo up to eleven. It's targeted at parents of teenagers and seems like a generally good idea, especially if you get a break on your insurance." The keys will be introduced with the 2010 Focus coupe and will quickly spread to Ford's entire lineup.

Comments

Re:Someone tell the European

[TooMuchToDo]

Almost any 16 year old can drive in the states if they take a driver's ed course, get their permit, rack some hours up with another licensed driver, and then take a test.

Re:Is 80 even legal?

[mrbrown1602]

Yes - West Texas, along portions of Interstates 10 and 20. Check the I-10 wikipedia page for a picture of the sign...

Re:Someone tell the European

[Max Romantschuk]

The bigger problem IMHO, is the requirements that are needed to get a license. I'm sure it has changed by now, but 10 years ago or so, to get a license in NJ, you never even had to take the car out into traffic. License tests were administered in coned parking lots. I'm sure there would be far fewer accidents with young people behind the wheel, if the testing to get a license was more stringent, and actually proved that you were a good driver.

That's very different from Finland. Here you have to be 18 to get your license, although you can start taking the required courses earlier. (I think I took the actual test on my birthday actually.)

But it's like 20 hours of driving with a professional instructor here, and about as much of theory lessons. The driving lessons also include driving in the dark (nighttime lesson) and driving on slippery surfaces (winters here). Finally there's an actual independent test, which if failed leads to more mandatory lessons.

And I still think most 18-year-olds behind the wheel are a huge risk, myself at that age included. Then again you have to start sometime... :)

Re:So you are stuck with the crap build in stereo

[vux984]

So you are stuck with the crap build in stereo also kids like to put in there own amps so the sound limit may not work that well then.

This would be used to limit their (mis)use of YOUR car. One would presume that if they are installing stereos and amps, its their car, and if its their car, they'll own the 'adult' keys for it anyway.

Re:Just as effective...

[plasmacutter]

it's a feature in most GPS systems, including the bargain basement models.

traction control

[Trepidity]

It seems to be popular to turn off traction control for parking-lot drag races, probably mainly for the visual/aural effect. On some cars where there was no way to switch it off, people would even install aftermarket firmware to let them do so (or on occasion there were undocumented button sequences to do so in the stock firmware); I seem to recall that being a big thing with BMWs for a while.

Probably not much of this frequently applies to a Ford Focus, though.

Re:traction control

[poetmatt]

Rocking your car out of the snow requires absence of traction control. If you can't turn it off, good job Ford!

Ford focuses are also notorious deathtraps. The cars crumble more than any other car in their market. Engine will drop at the slightest of frontal impacts (we're talking bumper dent equivalent).

Meanwhile, this is just an inch towards doing it for the "police" for your "Safety".

Re:traction control

[Pig Hogger]

Rocking your car out of the snow requires absence of traction control. If you can't turn it off, good job Ford!

Actually, no. Traction control will give you the maximum traction possible in snow, so you will not need to rock the car in the first place.

Re:traction control

[Garridan]

Actually, no. Driving with traction control on in the snow can be very dangerous. In my Thunderbird, at the very least, it tended to almost entirely prevent the car from turning while accelerating / maintaining speed -- it flutters the brakes to keep both sides going the same speed... and fluttering the brakes on snow/ice is just as smart as stomping on them. Just about creamed a busload of kids once, thanks to this lovely "feature". Took me a while to figure out what was causing the erratic behavior, but once I did, it was very easy to reproduce in a controlled environment (snow-covered parking lot with no kids to endanger).

Re:traction control

[Avtuunaaja]

Actually, abs brakes do not really help or hurt your stopping distance in most cases, in laboratory conditions keeping static friction works best but on a dirty road just burning rubber often gets better results. But reducing stopping distance is not even what they are supposed to do. They make you able to steer your car while maximum braking, and even if that costs you a few meters of stopping distance, it's well worth it - something I found out first hand when some nice old lady decided to drive onto the highway right in front of me when I was going ~100km/h.

I know they tell you that the direction of front tires have no effect on where the car is going when the brakes are locked, and I'm pretty sure I actually tested it once or twice at safe speed, but nothing prepares for the horror when you realize that there is someone right in front of you and you are closing in fast, there is a truck coming on the opposite lane, and since you forgot to not to turn the wheel while brakes were locked, you have no idea what direction the tires are facing currently, so if you release the brakes until slow enough, you risk driving off-road or even flipping the car.

Would not buy a car without ABS again.

Re:traction control

[Matje]

They make you able to steer your car while maximum braking

mod parent up. I've you've ever attended a safe driving course where you train emergency stops you'll know why you need ABS. Without ABS you'll have to let go of the brakes to steer your car around the obstacle. During our practice runs we killed quite a few virtual deer without ABS, whereas with ABS you just steer around the obstacle while keeping the brakes applied.

BTW if you've never experienced ABS you'd be well advised to try it on a quiet road someday. The first time you're likely to think you broke something as ABS makes a terrible noise. As our instructor said: when you start hearing the grinding sound, kick the brakes even further.

Re:traction control

[csteinle]

True, you don't need ABS if you can cadence brake. But it's a lot easier and safer to let the car do it far more rapidly and just slam the breaks on with ABS. Locking the wheels won't stop you quicker - especially in the wet, and it'll also stop you from being able to steer around that semi.

Re:traction control

[joto]

Try living somewhere with actual snow.

People that live where it snows use tire chains, not some sort of "rock the wheels" technique. If you are driving a ford focus in the snow without tire chains, you have bigger things to worry about than the ability to turn traction control off.

I live in Norway. We have snow. Lots of it. Snow tires are mandatory during winter. But very few Norwegians even own a set of tire chains. They can't be used at high speed, they are noisy, they damage the road, and probably also the car after a while (especially newer cars who don't have enough space around the wheels to safely use them), and they are a hassle to put on and off. And we certainly use the "rock the wheels" technique, whenever we are in lots of snow, typically such as when the snow plow has made certain our parked car is buried in snow. And hey, Ford Focus and similar models from other manufacturers are fairly common here.

Typically, if you are stuck in snow, you would try to get loose by doing these things in this order

1. "Rock the wheels" technique
2. Ask someone to help push the car over the obstacle
3. Try to put something that gives traction on the ground in front of the wheels, such as sand, the rubber foot mats in the backseat, a towel, or something similar
4. Dig away some snow with a shovel
5. Ask some passing car to help pull you out with a rope
6. Call for help from a car rescue service

Tire chains is typically not on the list, although "quick chains" and "tire socks" (made out of some sort of fabric) which are used only for a short distances (typically a few meters) is somewhat common if you live in a more rural area and have this problem every morning. In which case you could put them in as an alternative in step 3. Or simply buy a 4x4, which for some strange reason also tends to work better in the snow. Oh yeah, trailers sometimes use tire chains. But that's different from driving a normal car anyway.

Re:traction control

[adamjaskie]

The best thing you can do to improve your chances of not getting in an accident in winter is spend a few hours playing in a snow-covered parking lot. Put your car into skids by yanking on the e-brake while turning, and practice recovering from them. Practice stopping. Practice swerving around imaginary obstacles.

Re:traction control

[Emperor Skull]

Very good (professional) drivers can stop quicker than cars with ABS in some instances, such as a racetrack, because a driver can learn the limits of adhesion between the tires and a particular road surface and brake at the threshold of lockup. ABS systems are either going to have to wait until lockup actually occurs, or rely on some preprogrammed logic about how hard the brakes are being applied and how fast the car is deaccelerating. Not all ABS systems are created equal.

Multi channel ABS systems do have a fantastic advantage in cases where each individual wheel has a different amount of traction due to surface conditions and weight transfer. No way a driver with a single brake pedal can compete with this.

Re:traction control

[flosofl]

You've never actually been anywhere that it snows, have you? Do you honestly think the millions of people in Minneapolis, Chicago, Buffalo all use tire chains? Roads would have to be replaced completely every year.

Er, here in Chicago, they pretty much do. Or they should.

What? I live in Chicago (born and raised).. actually, just outside the city limits and not only have I *never* seen anyone with chains on their tires, I'm pretty sure it's illegal to use chains on public roads. Road repair is bad enough in the area without the all the damage chains would add.

Re:traction control

[profplump]

Yes. Obviously the post was suggesting that only his life was important. He couldn't possibly have meant that it may be safer for everyone to have a 10 MPH impact between to mobile objects than a 70 MPH impact with an immovable object.

But hey, don't stop your reductio ad absurdum trolling on my behalf.

Re:All this sounds nice, but there's another side.

[davester666]

Actually, having automatically-enforced speed limits would be a tough call.

Federally, they would like to have this automatically enforced (as there is a huge cost related to speeding, accidents, road wear, etc).
But for states and particularly city gov't, speeding tickets are an excellent source of revenue.

Even though the data recorder in your car was sold to you using the "it just tracks info so the manufacturer can improve your cars safety", in reality it is used for:

-to deny you your warrantee, if you have a problem with your car, but it shows you doing something the manufacturer didn't want you to do (or go somewhere they didn't want you to go)
-to charge you with speeding and dangerous driving and whatever else the data record shows, when you get into an accident

And now that the gov't has found out how useful these data recorders are, they are mandating that more cars have them, that they cannot be disabled and that they track more data.

Re:All this sounds nice, but there's another side.

[Anonymous Coward]

Turning into traffic on a snowy road sometimes requires turning off the traction control. I need to get up to speed to merge in, not suddenly lose all power to the one wheel that is gripping.

Re:...especially if you get a break on your insura

[wickerprints]

I am an actuarial analyst for a major property and casualty insurer in the US.

Insurance rates tend to trend upward because inflation, loss costs, and adjustment/expense costs trend upward. Despite popular belief, they do not trend upward because of the profit contingency loading, and this is due to the fact that personal insurance is a very highly regulated industry in the US. If my company simply decided to increase our loading by even 0.5%, you can be assured that every state Dept. of Insurance would write back immediately, asking why we feel justified raising profit loading by that amount, right before they deny our filings.

In layman's terms, loss costs increase because the value of insured properties such as autos and homes tend to increase. What I mean by this is not depreciation, or the decline in value of a single purchased asset, but rather the idea that the average paid value of assets or services rendered increases over time, due to inflation or technological improvements. Health care 10 years ago did not cost what it does today. Cars didn't cost what they do today. And so forth.

Loss adjustment expenses also increase in coordination with inflation and the cost of doing business.

It is also in part because more people survive accidents that the cost of insurance goes up. More survivors = more injured = higher medical payments. Similarly, more technology = higher repair cost. There is also a loose correlation in that safer vehicles tend to lead to less safe driving habits.

I understand that the average consumer is naive about the nature of insurance. If the public truly wishes to decrease their premiums, then in roughly decreasing order of importance, (1) drive less, (2) drive slower and more carefully, (3) don't buy SUVs or large vehicles. Of course, this only applies to the population as a whole. As an individual insured, your exposure as determined by your insurer has to do with your age, gender, location, credit history (where permitted), type and age of vehicle, and driving record, among other variables. The extent to which a group of insureds incurs greater losses is the extent to which those people pay higher premiums. That is the principle upon which actuarial ratemaking is founded, and if the public is unhappy with how much it costs to insure their assets, then stop having so much loss. After all, do you think insurers actually want to increase rates on their policyholders? They don't, because there is so much competitive pressure to keep rates low, for fear of losing business. In fact, if an insurer files a rate change significantly lower than their indicated rate need, that is a red flag to the DOI, because it raises the possibility of insolvency risk.

If you think insurance is a scam, tell that to the people whose entire earthly possessions were wiped out in Hurricanes Katrina and Ike, or the California wildfires. On the one hand, they'll tell you how insurance saved them, but on the other hand, if you don't live in a risk-prone state, you'll wonder why these people thought living on an island right along Hurricane Alley would be a good idea, and why you should be asked to partially subsidize their choice.

Re:exactly, GOV DRM backdoored into your car.

[Splab]

Anything distracting the driver is a huge danger, I can't even count the number of times I've been in near collision with a driver on his cell, looking on a map or otherwise engaged in anything but making sure there isn't a bike in his way when taking the next right.

And as to the people claiming you need the extra horse powers to get away; not bloody likely. Most will panic and do silly things, you don't need horsepower to get away from an accident, you need to keep your head cool and go around it. Going faster doesn't help you if you are already doing the wrong thing.

Re:All this sounds nice, but there's another side.

[lysergic.acid]

this might be a dumb question, but what's a 5mph bumper? i'm not really a car guy.

also, wouldn't it be better for people to drive in lighter cars with well-designed crumple zones to absorb impacts rather than cars with big heavy steel frames that add momentum/energy to a collision?

just because the car's body holds together during a collision doesn't mean the driver's will. the stronger the car is built the less energy it will absorb in a collision, thus the driver is more likely to be injured. so the idea that you need a big heavy car to protect yourself on the road seems out of line with reality--and it's actually counterproductive as it just makes roads more dangerous.

and despite the perceived trend of cars being built less sturdy than they used to be, car safety has gone up significantly in the past few decades. occupant fatality rates (per 100,000 population) declined 22.7% from 1975 to 1992. and that trend has pretty much continued. occupant injury rate has declined 23.6% from 1992 to 2005.

Re:All this sounds nice, but there's another side.

[SL Baur]

what's a 5mph bumper? i'm not really a car guy.

An X mph bumper can withstand an accident at X mph and not get damaged.

At the time I was talking about (mid 1980s), 5mph bumpers had been standards but the standards were being reduced. Light trucks (of the kind that tended to be young person's first vehicles) started being offered with NO rear bumper.

It also became popular at this time to sell the so-called "family vans" with paper bumpers. On the day that a friend was driving me to the dealership to get my car, we passed a mess and he told me "say 'ouch' Steve". We had passed a "family van" involved in a low speed accident that looked nearly totalled.

also, wouldn't it be better for people to drive in lighter cars with well-designed crumple zones to absorb impacts rather than cars with big heavy steel frames that add momentum/energy to a collision?

Probably. I'm an engineer, but not that kind of engineer so I can only offer a guess. I can only offer anecdotal evidence that my Ford Escort died to preserve me and I will always have a special place in my heart for it (but mostly to the Ford engineers who designed it to protect me).

Re:We need a cars category in slashdot

[moosesocks]

If you haven't seen it already, go watch Top Gear. It's effectively a British combination of Mythbusters and Car Talk.

Absolutely brilliant, and also one of the best-filmed shows on TV today.

Re:*sigh*...

[Kjella]

my experience is that 99.99999999% of drivers on the freeway (as well as off, but that's irrelevant) are horrible, horrible drivers, putting me at a great risk of dying (...) the solution isn't to slow down, because you inevitably have another person behind you who's keeping five feet of distance from you. you get boxed in, and there's no fucking other choice. there is no solution to this problem, and you are deluding yourself if you think there is.

Uh... brake, slowly? So that the guy behind you will have time to back off and you'll get a gap between you and the guy in front. Most people that drive 5 feet up another car's ass is because they want to pass it, so because a guy is riding 5 feet up a truck's ass you're going to pass it AND the truck (since there's no space in betwee), probably on the same clearing as the other guy will want to pass the same truck? With the same guy still behind you? Let me try to explain to you what that looks like from his angle.

"Well, I was getting ready to pass that truck, I was up close and ready waiting for a gap in traffic, when this crazy fucker comes from behind at a huge speed and whizzes past. When I finally passed the truck myself, I get past only to find the fucker has slowed down again and is now blocking me. OMG WTF is he messing with me?"

And no, the rest of the drivers just see two crazy fucks looking to get past the trucks, you'll get no sympathy there. I think people like you suffer from some mild form of claustrophobia, believe it or not normal people that drive the "boxed-in" line do just fine, it's pretty much always those that take stupid risks to pass other cars that kill themselves. And maybe hit someone going the other way, but you can't help that much.

P.S. A few pointers: A heavily loaded truck brakes slower than a regular car. Truck drivers usually have many road miles and rarely do brainfart maneuvers. They have high taillights so not only the closest car but probably you and a few behind you all realize it's breaking and slow down. A breaking car will almost certainly stop before a car in front that's lost control and isn't breaking - it's conservation of momentum. Personally, I'd worry a lot more if I just passed a truck and had to break hard - that is actually the most dangerous place to be.

Re:exactly, GOV DRM backdoored into your car.

[borizz]

They shouldn't be allowed to drive at all. Get some real amount of lessons, a strict theoretical exam and a practical exam. Then you can pick up your license. None of my friends have had an accident, and I'd like to think that's because in NL you actually have to show you're a good driver before you can get a license.

Re:All this sounds nice, but there's another side.

[uchian]

Speeding up is never a good idea, if the situation is dangerous, chucking more energy into a possible crash will just make it worse.

Secondly, you should be leaving enough space in front of you to brake safely, and if that space becomes compromised you should rebuild that space quickly. There is no excuse for going into the back of someone, it means that you wasn't driving safely, and insurance claims agree on this 99% of the time.

Thirdly, top speed is not the same as acceleration. Acceleration can be handy to get out of a tight situation like pulling out of a junction or onto a roundabout, but going more than 80 mph is not a tight situation.

Re:Snow tires?

[autocracy]

You probably mean studded (snow) tires. Those are restricted because the little metal studs, like chains, wear the asphalt quite notably. Lots of people with snow tires have no studs, though. As far as I'm aware, those are allowable everywhere anytime.

Re:Speed Camera scare mongering

[pjt33]

The numbers actually suggest there are quite significant savings of lives and serious injury.

Maybe they do. However, you can't trust the DFT's figures because they don't take into account regression to the mean.

Not really a new idea

[dreamchaser]

The 'upgraded' ECU software on my car has a 'Valet Mode' that limits the maximum speed. I can also plug my laptop into my OBD port and set the governor to whatever max speed I want. It's nice to see it as a factory feature though.

Not a new idea

[Jozef Nagy]

This idea of a handicapped key is not new. My jetski has this. It's a great way to make sure your friend doesn't destroy $10K worth of toy his first time riding it.