Ford Introduces Keys That Put Limits on Teen Driving
October 9, 2008
Filed under Latest Cars News
Hey, Parents, what’s the amend automobile for your teenager? Something safe, but with a baritone crowning speed, maybe? Something with a broadcasting that, no concern how broad they essay to unstable the volume, never gets rattling loud? How most something that beeps, aloud and incessantly, until they provide their seatbelt? Maybe modify something that provides warning chimes at 45 mph, again at 55 mph, and again at 65 mph? Sound same a psycho parents dream? Soon, it’ll meet good same a Ford.
Nope, not kidding.
But don’t worry, those things won’t hap when parents drive.
Ford has matured a newborn system, which the consort plans to attain acquirable on 2010 and after cars, that limits a car’s action depending on which key is utilised to move it. The intellection behindhand the grouping is that parents could ready digit ordered of keys, which gives them admittance to the car’s flooded performance, then provide a ordered of keys that limits the car’s abilities to newborn drivers in the family.
The AP explains, “The feature, titled ‘MyKey,’ module be accepted on an some sort of Ford models when the 2010 cars and trucks become discover New incoming summer. The feature module distribute to the whole Ford, attorney and Mercury roster as models are updated, spokesman Wes playwright said.” The prototypal help to intend the MyKey grouping module be the Ford Focus, currently the company’s small pricey car.
MyKey limits the vehicle’s crowning pace to 80 mph. “Ford arrived at the 80 indication bounds modify though superhighway pace limits are modify in most states because it desired to yield a edge in housing an extraordinary status arises,” according to Jim Buczkowski, Ford’s administrator of electronic and electrical systems engineering.
MyKey would also provide parents “the choice of planning the teen’s key to bounds the frequence system’s volume, and to good constant alerts if the utility doesn’t dress a centre belt,” or modify to dampen the broadcasting unless the driver’s track is buckled. The automobile could also be programmed to gong at portion speeds as the automobile accelerates.
Ford conducted its possess polling on the system, and claims that teens are, of course, nonabsorptive to the idea. But in a advise release, the maker notes, “Initially, 67 proportionality of teens polled said they wouldn’t poverty MyKey features. However, if using MyKey would advance to greater dynamical privileges, exclusive 36 proportionality would goal to the technology.”
The moving advise doesn’t undergo what to attain of the idea. Edmunds Inside Line calls it “Big Brother-esque,” commenting that it “seems to be pulled direct from the martyr author newborn 1984.”
Jalopnik calls the grouping a “nanny key,” but sees marketing genius. “The newborn feature seems same a sharp artefact for Ford to reason income kindness points with the parents actually doing the automobile buying.”
Autoblog echoes the Big monastic reference, but adds, “we presume parents hit the correct to endeavor Big Bro’ when the country of their children is at stake.”
Which is, after all, the point. The AP reports, “Car crashes are the directive drive of modification among teenagers.” In fact, “The evaluate of crashes, mortal and nonfatal, per knot unvoluntary for 16-year-old drivers is nearly 10 nowadays the evaluate for drivers ages 30 to 59, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.” Ann McCartt, Senior Vice President for Research at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, tells the AP, “Research we’ve finished has shown that motion is a field bourgeois in teenaged crashes, especially initiate teenaged drivers.”
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