Earlier this week, Ford Motor Co. presented its new system
developed to help parents gain a little more control over their children’s
driving. The key technology allows parents to set the limits of how fast the
car can go, how loud the car’s stereo can be turned and also make sure that the
seatbelt is used.
The system will be used as a standard feature on next year’s
Ford Focus and will also be adopted by the Lincoln and Mercury vehicles.
"Teens are probably the riskiest drivers. MyKey helps
parents encourage their teens to drive safely," said Sue Cischke, group
vice president of sustainability, environment and safety engineering at Ford.
The benefits of such a system are numerous, as there are many
parents extremely worried knowing that their kids, with their recently passed driver
tests, are running the streets without supervision. Among the restrictions and
enhanced alerts, the menu provides an option for switching the "Low
Fuel" alert from 50 miles to 75 miles and also one to track how far the
car was driven. The most appreciated function is the limit that can be imposed
to the car's speed, ranging from 60 to 80 miles per hour.
Each of the eight keys can be set separately to its own list
of parameters and adults can choose to drive the cars without any of them. There
is also a special security setting that resets the mileage for the teen’s key,
in order to alert parents if their master key is stolen to adjust the restrictions.
The details have been extremely carefully planned and it is very likely to
appeal to many parents interested in improving their children’s safety.
"It's making use of existing technology, and through
the magic of software, we're able to build features on top of the features we
already have," said Jim Buczkowski, Ford's director of electronic and
electrical systems engineering.
One of the reasons why such a system was considered useful
is because teens show the lowest interest in wearing a seatbelt, not realizing
its importance in the event of an accident. The car maker explained that teens
have the lowest seatbelt usage rates of any demographic, which puts the
accidents with motor vehicles as the leading cause of death for young Americans
aged between 16 and 20.
Ford also presented other safety systems. The company
developed a new crash-avoidance system that alerts drivers and pre-charges the
breaks before a collision, a blind-spot detection system and also a backup
radar system used for detecting other cars, motorcycles, bikes or pedestrians
approaching from the side.
MyKey was received with great enthusiasm by the parents in
Ford’s focus groups. The teens involved in the surveys were less than thrilled
initially but on the second round of questions many appeared open to the idea
if it would mean more access to the family car. Another factor that appealed to
teens was the possibility of receiving discounts from insurance companies if
the system is in use.
The service will hopefully boost the industry’s efforts for
improving the safety of driving even more.