Michigan parents now tracking their teen's driving

Written by: Mariah Rochester '12         
          With new programs and technology, Michigan parents can track the driving habits of their teens. Parents are able to track when their teens are pulled over and the location of the vehicle. They receive alerts when teens are rapidly accelerating or decelerating, they can set geographic boundaries, and they can keep track of how much time their teens spend behind the wheel.

         The STOPPED program, which stands for Sheriffs Telling Parents and Promoting Educated Drivers, is a free program available to all parents with teen drivers. When a vehicle is registered with the STOPPED program, a sticker is placed on the inside of the front windshield and when a young motorist is stopped by a sheriff’s deputy, his/her parents receive a letter about the traffic stop even if a ticket is not issued.

Heartland and Pinckney High Schools in Livingston County require all students who drive to school to have vehicles registered in STOPPED.

         The Michigan Sheriff’s Association says that more than 16,000 vehicles are registered in the STOPPED program. Parents can register a vehicle at http://michigansheriff.com.

Holland’s Crayon Interface’s wireless training tool, Copilot, is an innovative device that plugs into a standard port found in all vehicles built after 1995. Copilot tracks, in real time, the driver’s performance on everything from speed to location through the use of personal computers, software, and mobile devices.

         Parents can instantly locate their teen drivers using an interactive map, they receive alerts when the vehicle is accelerating or decelerating rapidly, they can set geographic boundaries for their teens, and they can track their teens’ time spent behind the wheel for verification of supervised driving time required by most graduated drivers licenses.

          Copilot is about half the size of a deck of cards and plugs directly into a vehicle’s computer diagnostic port, which is normally located under the dash near the steering column. It costs $299 with an annual renewal service fee of $99 after one year.

          Crayon Interface’s vice president of business development, Kevin Virta, says, "The goal of Copilot is to give parents a method of observing and teaching their teens safe driving without always being in the passenger seat of the vehicle." The company hopes to reduce the number of traffic accidents, which is the leading cause of teen deaths.

         DriveCam is offered by The American Family Insurance Company as part of its Teen Safe Driver Program. DriveCam is a tiny, onboard camera that records when risky driving, including speeding, hard-braking, or swerving from lane to lane, occurs. The video information, which includes images from seconds before the event, is sent to safety analysts who provide a diagnosis and possible solutions.

         Rusty Weiss, the director of the consumer division at DriveCam, thinks that having a camera in the car prevents driving habits that teens would not want to be caught doing.

         Policy holders with American Family Insurance are eligible for a free one year subscription to the Teen Safe Driver Program, and DriveCam offers families with different insurance providers the technology for $899, including installation and a one year subscription.

         Safe Driver from Lemur Vehicle Monitors is intended to be a ‘tattletale’ for parents to monitor how their teens are driving. Safe Driver records the distance driven, any stops that activate the anti-lock brakes, and the maximum speed reached by the car.

         The Lemur system is about $60 and easy to install. The device plugs into the car’s OBDII port underneath the dash and transmits wirelessly to a key fob on the car’s key ring. If it is unplugged, parents will receive a "Tamper" message to know that their teen has deactivated the unit.

         According to a recent study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, high tech devices worked best when a teen heard an alert and was given the chance to correct their behavior while driving. Driving ten miles per hour over the speed limit dropped almost 60 percent, and sudden braking and accelerating dropped almost 40 percent.

         Data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shows that unaccompanied 16 and 17 year-olds crash nine times more often than adults. When parents are out of the car, seatbelt use drops to less than 40 percent of the national average. Teens and teenager passengers are the most accident-prone group; except when their parents are in the car. Though few teens are likely to admit it, having a monitoring system in the car may be the "next best thing" to having parents riding with them.