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Chevy Malibu 'Teen Driver' Tech Will Snitch If You Speed
mpicpp writes General Motors wants to help curb teen crashes with a new system that lets parents monitor their kids' driving habits—even when mom and dad aren't actually in the car. Dubbed Teen Drive, the new system will debut in the 2016 Chevy Malibu, offering a bunch of features designed to encourage safe driving. It will, for instance, mute the radio or any device paired with the car when front seat occupants aren't wearing their seatbelts, and give audible and visual warnings when the vehicle is traveling faster than preset speeds. It doesn't end there. Brace yourself, teens, because you might not like this next part too much. The new system also lets parents view a readout of how you drove the car, including how fast you went, how far you drove, and whether any active safety features (like over-speed warnings) were engaged. Parents can also set the radio system's maximum volume to a lower level, and select a maximum speed between 40 and 75 miles per hour, which, if exceeded, will trigger warnings.
Today's brand new 2016 car is next decade's shitbox old 2016 car.
Because then you'll have shithead 20somethings on the road instead, with no parental supervision whatsoever.
The only way to learn to drive is to drive.
Yes lets take inexperienced drivers and put them in an unreliable vehicle. What a BRILLIANT plan.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
If car manufacturers did sensible things we wouldn't have had to bail them out a few years ago.
They love vendor lock-in and planned obsolescence as much as gadget manufacturers do.
Glad this wasn't around when I was 18. Of course then my insurance was more than the car payment.
Because then you'll have shithead 20somethings on the road instead, with no parental supervision whatsoever.
The only way to learn to drive is to drive.
The difference is teens are much more shithead-like than 20-somethings (not that I haven't noticed the increasing prevalence of 20-something shitheads), and teens are often not held responsible (legally or financially) for their actions (further enabling shithead behavior).
Old doesn't necessarily mean unsafe or unreliable. Plenty of people drive 10 year old cars that are not putting them in danger.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
If you don't trust your kids, don't lend them your car.
Not letting your shithead teens on the fucking road in the first place?
Not letting them on the road seems a little extreme but do they have to have a brand new car? What happened to having a beater to putt around in for the first few years?
Ford Mykey has been around since MY 2010 or so. Limits radio volume, won't allow radio to play if seatbelts not fastened, speed limit at 130km/h (highest speed limit in NA), and speed reminder settable at a lower speed. The telemetry function is new.
As far as driving new cars... eventually these cars will end up being used cars, and as well in many cases they may be sharing the family car.
The first thing a geek teen is going to find is the "manual override"
Not letting them on the road seems a little extreme but do they have to have a brand new car? What happened to having a beater to putt around in for the first few years?
What does it matter to you? Sure I drove a beater like most of us but if a parent puts their kid in a new(er) car, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with that unless the kid develops an entitlement complex from it. If the money isn't an issue to them it really shouldn't matter to us either.
Getting a shiny new car for your first car is typically a symptom of being a spoiled brat.
(And yes, if the parents can afford a shiny new car to give their kid as their first car, they're likely very well off and thus the kid is likely a spoiled brat.)
Spoiled brats don't have to deal with consequences. Spoiled brats will drive like assholes. A shiny new car enforces this mentality, and it encourages driving with friends and doing stupid shit.
Have you ever even met a teenager?
If it's like the Ford model that had a similar feature a few years ago, it's controlled by which key you use - regular key, valet key, teenager key. Yeah, most teens could easily swap keys with Mummy or Daddy, but then Mummy and Daddy will start getting warnings when they speed or play the radio too loud.
Teenage drivers with fresh licenses should be driving older cheaper-to-buy cars.
Unless a teenager (or their parents) are rich, they should be buying an older cheaper car that doesn't require taking out a massive auto loan. In Australia the usual recommendation/good option is something small and Japanese like a Toyota Corolla, Honda Civic, Suzuki Swift, Mitsubishi Lancer, Nissan Pulsar, Mazda 323, Honda Jazz or something like that but in the US the best option may be different.
It's a Chevy. It's already a shitbox.
Ah, yes, Billy, Tammy and Chris. I think their last name is "Strawman".
Why can't they have what I had?
A POS car that could only go 75 if you turned off the AC.
The radio would cut out when you turned left, and if you tried to turn the volume up, you'd just blow a fuse anyway.
The backseat was so small you weren't getting up to anything even if you could convince a girl to look past the rust and bubbling clear-coat.
All this for less than $1k, and it gets 40mpg due to the three horsepower engine (one for each working cylinder)! Put the money you save into their college fund since they now have a chance of getting out of high school alive and childless.
Now excuse me as a I return to my Fortress of Solitude...
Those poor kids might have escaped the tornado if their car hadn't been limited to 45 miles per hour.
Such things already exist. Devices that plug into the OBD2 port on a vehicle and monitor/log all the relavent information already exist. Some combine this with GPS tracking (to log where the car is as well as how its being driven).
Plenty of options for parents to monitor how their teenager is driving and whether they are driving safely or not, this just happens to be one actually built into the car (and capable of doing more than just logging as a result)
Many older Japanese cars like Corollas, Pulsars, Civics etc are VERY reliable and still good choices even today (in terms of the likelihood of things going wrong and needing to be fixed) as long as they haven't been written off (crashed and rebuilt and re-registered) and have been properly maintained.
My first car was a piece of shit and I still drove it like I stole it. And if my parents had a technology like this one, I'd have had to explain to them how to set it up.
There's a growing intolerance for giving people the space to learn because 'safety' has become more important than exposure to graduated life lessons. Driving is one of them. Not letting teens drive just gives us all a bunch of 20 year olds who can't drive.
Entirely true. It would just make more sense if they developed technology that could be retrofitted in to any car instead of just their newest line.
There are a fucking million of them but, what good is a device that goes for around $100 when you can sell [announcer voice] aaaaaaaa new caaaaaaar! [/announcer voice].
we had this for over a decade. ODB-II dongle that is easy to install that records all that. Hell you could buy a version that had a gps that logged location.
Glad to see GM is finally catching up to 2005!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If it's like the Ford model that had a similar feature a few years ago, it's controlled by which key you use - regular key, valet key, teenager key. Yeah, most teens could easily swap keys with Mummy or Daddy, but then Mummy and Daddy will start getting warnings when they speed or play the radio too loud.
only if the teen isn't smart enough to only use the parent key to deactivate the limits on the teen key then return the parent key.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
It's been done for decades for more than 90% of the population, Let me guess you were just born yesterday and you live in beverly hills.
less than 1% of new drivers have a new car. 90% drive a shotbox that is barely running. Most dont have a nice trust fund that pays them $4500 a week like you do.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Same feelings here.
I would have hated it, but in 5 years my oldest is getting something like this.
I went ape shit when I got my first car, quite literally trying to emulate Dukes of Hazard(Filmed in my hometown BTW). Most all of us have some regret on their youth, but I am very lucky to be alive.
Because then you'll have shithead 20somethings on the road instead, with no parental supervision whatsoever.
The only way to learn to drive is to drive.
The difference is teens are much more shithead-like than 20-somethings (not that I haven't noticed the increasing prevalence of 20-something shitheads), and teens are often not held responsible (legally or financially) for their actions (further enabling shithead behavior).
Actually, numerous studies have shown that teen drivers are no worse than inexperienced drivers of any age. That's what prompted the gov't here in Ontario to change the licensing rules some time ago so that after your probationary period (the first 2-5 years that you have your license) you have to take a second road test, where they basically test how experienced you are (based on how you handle the car, etc.) to get your full license. The problem was in the past that many teens simply didn't drive during their probation period (many didn't have access to a car, for instance) and then they got their full unrestricted license with basically no driving experience whatsoever. They've now plugged that loophole and it is pretty much impossible to pass the second test without lots of driving experience.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Nonsense, "a friend" is role-neutral name for group member or dungeon master. We had all kinds of friends - mages, rogues, clerics...
No. There's plenty of space to learn - and now there's recourse for abusing the freedom they've been given. The car doesn't shut off, the parents are required to remove driving privileges... if my kids want to drive my car, there are rules. I already told my son (months away from getting his license) that I will never buy him a car - I will by myself a car and let him use it as long as he's obeying the rules. He didn't complain... I don't owe him a car. It's a privilege. If he doesn't want to be monitored, he can pay for his own car and his own insurance... it's just that simple.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I wonder how much this opens the owner up to additional liability when there's an accident and the opposing council subpenas the records of the vehicle and shows a pattern of reckless driving?
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Far as I can tell, everyone who bikes in Seattle is constantly having sex. Even while cycling.
Title says it all. This is a pilot program for the automotive insurance industry to offer "reduced rates". Eventually, it becomes mandatory on new cars based on some government regulated standards.
Yeah well, they can suck my cock and like it!
Life is not for the lazy.
My kids, who just turned 8, are unlikely to even learn how to drive. They'll live in a world where all cars are self-driving, and which report all location data to the security services for National Security. We'll be sold on the convenience of self-driving cars, in return for the manufacturers knowing where every car is at every moment. Since self-driving cars will be leased, and not sold (even if they were sold, vehicle registration takes care of the identification), they'll know, more or less, who is driving where and when. Those who drive themselves will be viewed with suspicion, and likely treated as subversive actors. Only a criminal would care if there's a record of their every move.
Before you shrug it off as "well so what if Ford knows where went?" Consider that the security services will certainly have complete access to all of that data, for National Security purposes, of course.
This isn't "tin foil hat" territory any more, it's standard fucking practice.
Celebrity worship is a poor substitute for Deity worship and costs more to boot.
Getting a shiny new car for your first car is typically a symptom of being a spoiled brat.
No it doesn't. I know that the first years of driving are the ones you are most at risk. Having come very close to being a blood splat more than a few times I will be aiming to buy my kids as close to a new car as possible because the safety is higher and the service history is more known. A new car doesn't equal a fast car. I would rather that my daughters are driving a new sedan like a Camry than a 15 year old version of the same car.
All that tin foil hat crap is likely true, we already have automated plate readers tracking vehicles today. Most people have cell phones and all of those are tracked. However the tech for actual city driving autonomous cars is more like 30-50 years out. 10 years from now we could have specialized freeway autonomous driving, but even that is unlikely given the public backlash when the first baby is killed by a machine mistake no human would make.
If your kids never learn to drive its likely either because they live in a dense urban area with good public transit or are too rich to drive themselves.
As opposed to serial psychopathy, where parents believe their children should never have adult supervision of any kind, and are just turned loose on society as wild animals to be put down when they get caught?
In the noughties my employers set out to develop similar technology. We had GPS-based units that would record where a vehicle was and could be programmed to tell on you if you drove too fast, stopped for too long, went to somewhere you weren't supposed to go, and so on. They communicated over a 2 way paging network.
The technology worked. I did the mobile device programming and put together a test unit that used differential GPS. Instead of telling you which street you were on, it could tell you which lane you were in. :-)
The marketing, on the other hand, didn't work. :-(
...laura
No cell phones meant your parents couldn't track you, and Lordy....I'd have long lost a car if they'd not only tracked me but monitored my speed. UGH!!
At least we were free to be kids back then, and learn from our actions, sure there were some bad times and consequences, but that's a part of growing up!!
So glad there wasn't a fucking camera EVERYWHERE I went as a kid and a teen....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........