‘Black Boxes’ Can Monitor Teen Drivers
Despite all the hours of driver’s training, viewing gory accident movies and countless safety lectures from parents and police, many teens are bent on driving dangerously. Even the deaths of their peers in horrific accidents fail to deter some from speeding and driving recklessly.
“There’s a certain percentage that will be lousy drivers and push the limits” no matter how often they’ve been warned of the consequences, said John Leslie, director of operations at Safety First Driving School in Westlake Village.
Most young drivers act like model citizens when driving with mom and pop or instructors. But what happens when they hit the road on their own? Are they drinking and driving, speeding or taking the car without permission?
Some parents hire a private investigator to shadow their teens when they suspect they are driving dangerously or sneaking out at night with the family car.
But now there’s technology to help parents monitor their teen’s driving behavior.
These little black boxes, or electronic vehicle monitoring devices, can record speeds, distances traveled, acceleration rate and more. Some gadgets even record whether seat belts are worn. The devices can work surreptitiously, or parents can warn their teens that they are being monitored.
These devices are used by businesses that operate fleets of delivery vans or trucks, and by police and emergency departments to monitor their employees’ driving habits.
SmartDriver of Houston sells one such monitoring device that is a tad larger than a deck of cards and weighs about 5 ounces.
It’s plugged into the vehicle’s data port located under the dashboard on newer models. No other installation is required, said Wright Gore, SmartDriver’s co-founder. The equipment, along with special Windows software, allow users to pinpoint the driving information they want to record.
For example, the device can report when the vehicle reaches speeds of more than 70 mph or when the accelerator is pressed three-quarters of way to the floor.
The data are retrieved by downloading the SmartDriver into a computer for viewing. The device is sold via the Internet at www.smart-driver.com for $495, or can be rented for $49.95 a month.
These monitoring devices also have been marketed to driving schools. Gore said nervous parents usually contact his company when they’ve seen their teenager driving badly, or after getting a call from other parents who say, “Hey, I saw your Jimmy doing 90 miles an hour.”
Another company about to start marketing a similar product is Road Safety International in Thousand Oaks (www.roadsafety.com). The firm’s chief executive, Larry Selditz, said his black box, called SafeForce, will be in stores by the end of March with a retail price of $280.
Selditz said 10,000 of these types of devices have been installed in professional and emergency vehicle fleets. And he said SafeForce monitors “second by second” what’s happened in the vehicles and emits a warning sound if the driver is going too fast, not wearing a seat belt or taking corners too fast.
If the drivers don’t change their driving habits, the audio blast continues and the driving behavior is recorded. The system can be plugged into a car’s data link connector on vehicles made since 1996. The system may work on older cars, but the device must be installed by a qualified auto technician, Selditz said.
This monitoring system helps curb the “aggressive driving habits that so many teens have because of their inexperience behind the wheel,” said Selditz. “They think nothing bad can happen to them.”
When teens arrive home, parents can download the data into their PC. Although the devices provide a play-by-play look at what happened when their teens were behind the wheel, it is not a real-time device.
Mike Woodard, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy who coordinates the department’s Sheriff’s Teen Traffic Offender Program, said parents who struggle to get their teens to drive carefully may want to consider using these devices.
“There is tremendous peer pressure on kids to get that license and go out and play,” said Woodard. “Driving a car should be looked at as a privilege, not a gift.... They have to realize that their vehicle is a deadly weapon. If they drive too fast, mess around and kill someone, they could go to jail just like an adult.”
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Jeanne Wright responds in this column to automotive questions of general interest. Write to Your Wheels, Business Section, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. E-mail: jeanrite@aol.com.
