Rocky Mountain Tracking

By Greg Bartlett

Few moments in a parent’s life cause more pride and at the same time more trepidation as the first time a teenager takes the car out for a solo drive. Watching your child maneuver the car down the street carefully observing each driving rule he has learned can cause your heart to swell with pride and accomplishment. Yet the knowledge that your teen has only a few hours of driving experience under his belt can also cause you to pace the floor until he returns safely home. Hazards abound, and your teen may not have the experiential know-how to avoid them. Apart from requiring your teen to check in every 15 minutes, how can you put your mind at ease as to his safety and whereabouts? GPS vehicle tracking provides peace of mind for those long nights when your son or daughter is out with friends in the family car.

GPS technology continues to expand in its effectiveness each year. A transmitter placed in the car sends a signal to a receiver which can then verify location. Some vehicle tracking devices can also monitor things such as speed, fuel usage, and travel time—useful knowledge for a parent who wants to verify that his teen went exactly where he said he did.

In the United States, over 4,500 teenagers die from vehicle crash injuries each year. An additional 400,000 teens receive injuries in car crashes. As many as 30% of these crashes are alcohol related. As frightening as these statistics are, they are not inevitable. Many accidents involving teen drivers could have been avoided had a more experienced driver been behind the wheel. GPS vehicle tracking can serve as a springboard for talking to your teen about safe driving habits. If you know each place your teen has been, how fast he has been driving, and how many stops he made, you can formulate a strategy for helping your teen understand the dangers of the road and how best to avoid them.

Teens need to assert their independence. It’s part of cutting the apron strings and making their way in the world. Driving plays a large role in this process, and teens need the support of their parents. Being a supportive parent, however, does not mean being a helpless one. Vehicle tracking systems allow you to take a more active role in monitoring your teen’s driving habits. It could even save his life.

By Greg Bartlett

My younger brother is a dangerous driver. I wasn’t joking when I told people to stay off the roads when he got his permit. Knocking over trashcans, scraping mailboxes, riding up on curbs, pulling into the parking space a little too far: teenage drivers do it all. And unless there’s visible damage to the car itself, they see no need to tell their parents about it.

No wonder so many parents are concerned for the safety of their teenage drivers. But using new vehicle tracking devices, parents can know every movement that their teenagers make in the car. Parents are willing to shell out a little extra every month in exchange for the peace of mind that their teenager is following the driving rules they set up.

The programs that come with vehicle tracking devices might not be able to point out that your teenager hit a mailbox when he backed out of the driveway a little too sharply, but you would be able to see his location and that he started to back out and had to pull in a little and try again. Little movements like this would show what your teenage driver needs to work on. Parents with inexperienced teenage drivers may not be able to prevent the mistakes caused by their young people, but using vehicle tracking devices, they can be sure that their teens learn from their mistakes.

However, these programs can’t do everything. For example, the devices can’t check for drinking and driving, but you will be able to tell if your teen is driving in a reckless manner. There is obviously not guarantee that your teenager will be safe while in the car, but these devices can definitely improve the situation in a variety of ways.

Many vehicle tracking devices track speeding and can even monitor whether or not the teen is using his seatbelt. Parents can also get text message alerts sent to their cell phone if their teen exceeds a certain speeding or drives out of or into a predetermined area. This allows the parents to be reassured that their teen is staying out of trouble and following the rules. Automobile accidents are the leading cause of death among young people. Parents should do everything they can to decrease the number of teens killed in car crashes every year.

Recently, an online article highlighted the ways in which parents can keep track of teens using a GPS tracking device. In one scenario, a teenager took the new car out for a spin while his parent was out of town. A brand new car, especially a sporty one (as this one was) is very tempting to a teenager who know believe that they are not being supervised. The teen’s father was on a business trip, but was fully aware of what was going on thanks to the GPS tracking device he has installed his vehicle. He was informed that his son had gone above the speed limit and that this was done in an area that was much farther from home than the teen was allowed to travel.

This father took matters into his own hands from thousands of miles away and shut down the ignition, once the car had arrived at its destination. Now some child-rearing experts say that the use of GPS tracking to monitor teen driving habits should not become punitive. You may ask—what it the point of finding out that your teen is doing something dangerous and not punishing them?

Well, we are not here to tell you how to raise your children; we just want to provide you with technological assistance to help you keep them safe. It is up to you to decide the best way to make use of the information you get from employing a GPS tracking device.

Visit Rocky Mountain Tracking online to peruse GPS tracking devices designed to keep parents informed of their teenagers’ driving habits.

Spring is here. Birds are chirping. It is getting warmer outside and the great outdoors beckons more now than it has for the last few months.

Prom and graduation season will be upon us before we know it. And if you are the parents of a teenager, you may already be hearing about your child’s plans to enjoy the warm weather and the company of friends.

No matter how wise your teen may seem, they are not yet ready to take on all of the responsibility of adulthood on their own. They still need you to provide guidance, no matter how much they protest that they are ready to take on the world by themselves.

GPS tracking devices are not difficult to install or use and they are a great way to give your child some freedom and give you some piece of mind. Tracking devices that monitor speed and seatbelt use can make all the difference in a young person’s life and in the life of their family. They give parents the ability to step in if they feel that their teen is not practicing safe driving habits.

And then there is that matter of where your teen may actually be going…GPS teen tracking devices can also provide information on where a vehicle has traveled and when.

It is possible that installing a tracking devices is the only step you need to take. Some teen drviers will be unwilling to take the risk of breaking the rules or driving in an unsafe manner if they know that their parents will find out. For others, the GPS auto tracker will give parents vital information that will allow them to take necessary steps to keep their child safe.

You know the classic scene—a driver gets pulled over for speeding. They sigh, slow down, and pull over. A police officer exits a squad car, taps on the driver’s side window, and asked that famous question, “Do you have any idea how fast you were going back there?” Answers may vary from “ I don’t know, officer” to giving an excuse for why the speed is so necessary to making up a number.

But what if you didn’t have to make up a number? What if you could give an accurate answer? That might help some drivers and hurt others, depending on their actual speed.

One father is attempting to prove that his son was not speeding by using evidence gathered from the GPS tracking device he placed in his son’s car. The main purpose of the device was for the parents to stay informed about their son’s whereabouts and to monitor his speed, but now it may be put to another use.

As new technology enters our lives, we have to find ways to deal with how we apply it and how we govern ourselves in relation to new machines and gadgets. Cases like this set new precedents for how speeding tickets are contested.

There are any number of reasons that could account for why the GPS recorded a legal speed, while the officer’s radar gun recorded something above the speed limit. In one possible scenario, the calibration for the radar gun that the officer used was not exact.

The case has not been decided so it will be interesting to see how it all turns out.

In the meantime, the father involved stressed that he and his wife did not put the GPS device in their son’s car to avoid traffic tickets. Their goal was to encourage their teen to be a careful driver. He actually hopes that the attention that this case has received will get other parents thinking about using GPS technology to keep teen drivers safe and on the right side of the law.