Rocky Mountain Tracking

By Greg Bartlett

The news seems full of reports of teen driving deaths, around 3,500 in 2008 alone, and many parents wonder how they can keep their own young drivers safe. Certainly, when teenagers are learning, the solution is easy. Parents can sit right next to their children and monitor their every move, telling them to slow down, stop at stoplights, and cautioning them against reckless driving. However, what do parents do once their children are fully trained and learn to drive by themselves?

Teen Drivers & GPS

Many families have started using vehicle tracking systems to solve this problem. These systems allow parents to see exactly where their child is and what their child is doing. If a teenager is going over 70 in a 45 zone, he may find his phone ringing with a lecture from his mom. If another teenager appears to be engaged in reckless driving and won’t answer her phone, parents can track where she is and find her. Although these situations may seem unnecessary and annoying, especially to the teenagers involved, many lives could be saved by using GPS tracking.

Guy Thompson of Lake Oswego, Oregon tracks his 16 year old driver, Maggie using a vehicle tracking device. At first, he admits, he checked on her regularly throughout the day, and Maggie confesses she didn’t like being on a leash. However, the pair says that after awhile, Thompson started checking only once a day, and she grew used to the vehicle tracking device, forgetting, at times, that it was even there. Of course, like any teenager, she wishes her parents didn’t use it in the first place, but she is willing to put up with the process and does acknowledge that it helped cultivate trust between her and her parents. Thompson, however, feels the device is fine. Although, he does add that it needs to be between parents and children.

Although many teenagers may feel these devices signify a lack of trust on their parents’ part, most parents view that miscommunication as a small price to pay for the safety and continued lives of their children. Granted, some children are trustworthy without GPS tracking. Still, many others need the accountability provided by such a device. Parents of teen drivers should seriously consider purchasing a vehicle tracking device, thus preventing their own children from being one of the next 3,500 deaths this year.

By Greg Bartlett

Teen drivers, the bane of every parent.  Most parents are or at least should be concerned when their teenager borrows the car for an evening out.  Car accidents are, after all, the leading cause of death for U.S. teenagers.  But what can parents do in order to permit their teens to still be free to do their activities while not endangering themselves or passengers?  After all, isn’t one of the benefits of your teen getting a driver’s license that the teenager no longer has to depend on you to drive him or her everywhere?

There are steps parents can take to help reduce the likelihood of accidents, such as driver’s ed, curfews so the teens don’t drive during dangerous times, and reminding the teens of safety issues.  The “little” things like wearing a seat belt or speeding can make a huge difference in a teen’s life.

But even despite your precautions, what happens if your son decides to take some of his friends out for pizza, and the peer pressure makes your son want to show off rather than follow your instructions?  Just a little bit of speeding, and your son and his friends might end up in the hospital, or even the morgue.  Or what if your daughter decides to sneak out after curfew?  How will you know to stop her until it’s too late?

Teenage Drivers & GPS

GPS tracking is one option parents can use to help ensure the safety of their teenage drivers.  When a car is equipped with a GPS tracking unit, the unit will monitor the car’s activities.  Parents can get a report of their teen’s driving activities so that they know how fast the teen has been driving or if the teen has been out after curfew.  While this won’t stop teens from unsafe driving, it can alert parents to problem areas that need to be addressed.  Better yet, some GPS tracking units will even alert the parent via a text message, email, or phone call the instant the car exceeds a certain speed or is driven during restricted hours, allowing you to stop the problematic behavior immediately and hopefully prevent an accident.

Driving is an important part of your teens’ lives, and of course you want to give them the freedom to drive themselves around - so long as they’re safe.  If you add GPS tracking to your other precautions, such as education and curfews, you can help ensure that your teens are not another accident statistic.

By Harriette Halepis

As soon as the first GPS tracker hit the shelves parents began tracking their children. Some parents simply wanted peace of mind that a child would not be abducted walking home from school, while other parents used the devices as a means of “technological parenting.”

GPS & Children

While many people argue that tracking a child is an invasion of that child’s privacy, it should be noted that many children have been saved thanks to GPS trackers. When a child is tracked via GPS, police can locate that child following abduction. Contrastingly, children who are not equipped with GPS trackers have very little hope of being found.

Still, many people wonder if attaching a GPS tracker to a child is akin to spying on children. In one way, parents who use GPS trackers are spying on their children - but, is this such a bad thing? Children under the age of 18 are generally gullible, innocent, and entirely trusting, which is why it’s relatively easy for a kidnapper to coax a child into a vehicle or away from other children.

When parents are keeping a watchful eye on children, the likelihood that a kidnapper will be able to abduct a child is lowered. Of course, kidnapping is still possible, but parents can quickly pinpoint the exact location of a kidnapper with the help of a GPS.

Some will argue that a parent/child relationship should be built upon trust, but at what age? While parents may want teenagers to trust them, far too many teens have run away from home never to be seen from again. Would these teens have been returned to their parents if they were wearing GPS tracking devices at the time they decided to run away?

On the flip side, there’s no doubt that some overprotective parents may attempt to track a child’s every move out of sheer anxiety. Likewise, some parents may rely too heavily upon GPS trackers to monitor children without building a relationship with children. However, both of these scenarios are extreme, and, therefore, only apply to a select group of people.

Another question that has been raised frequently is whether or not children have any real privacy rights. After all, how can a parent expect to protect a child if they are unaware of a child’s actions? Children who are granted too much privacy often wind up in troublesome situations. In the end, there is no clear cut answer to the question: is tracking your children an invasion of privacy?

By Greg Bartlett

A couple summers ago, I interned with a local family court.  There were a number of juveniles who came through the court during my internship who were being charged with truancy.  A few times, their parents were brought into the system, too, because they were under a court order to ensure that their kids got to school and the kids still weren’t attending classes.  Sometimes the juveniles didn’t go to school because their parents didn’t bother to make them, but sometimes the kids would refuse to get up or would even get on the bus and then get off someplace else, making their parents’ efforts useless.

GPS & Truancy

For parents who are concerned about their children’s education attendance, or who could even be facing jail time if their children do not attend school, a new option may turn out to be especially helpful.  Some students in Texas who are also frequent visitors to truancy court have been testing GPS monitoring, which allows that the court to ensure that the students are attending classes as ordered.

The GPS monitoring devices, which are about the size of a cell phone, can track the juveniles’ location and allow the truancy court officials to determine whether or not the individuals attended classes as required.  If they drop out of the program or leave the devices at home, the juveniles can face jail time for contempt of a court order.  Apparently the threat is working, because the program is reporting a 98% attendance rate for students on the program, and a continued 97% attendance rate for those who finished.

GPS monitoring can be a help both to the student, encouraging him or her to attend classes and graduate, and to the parent, who no longer has to worry about trying to force a child to attend classes and to risk jail time if the child skips classes despite the parent’s efforts.  For family or truancy courts, a GPS device can help provide the answer by giving a case worker the ability to closely monitor a juvenile and to strongly encourage him or her to attend classes as ordered without having to follow the juvenile around each day.

During my internship, I saw many concerned and frustrated parents and social workers.  Without the ability to more closely monitor a juvenile and ensure school attendance, chronic truancy sometimes couldn’t be stopped.  GPS monitoring, however, provides the necessary supervision and is apparently helping truant students redirect their lives and start attending classes again.

By Harriette Halepis

Source acquired via The Eagle (Bryan, TX) Jan 20, 2010 — Since the first school was erected in Ancient Greece, kids have made it a point to skip class now and then. While most administrators give students a slap on the wrist for this type of truancy, Justice of the Peace Tommy Munoz has had enough of doling out small slaps.

GPS & Truancy

A recent announcement that Munoz would be equipping truant students with GPS trackers has had some parents outraged while others fully support the decree. As some parents have argued, the thought of monitoring students with GPS trackers tends to conjure up images of criminals.

Those opposed to Munoz’s ruling argue that since many criminals around the world have recently been given new GPS ankle bracelets to wear, putting truant students in the same category seems to be sending the wrong signal. Acknowledging these protests, Munoz made it very clear that the GPS trackers truant students would be given are not the same as those trackers that criminals currently wear.

Instead, the “truancy trackers” are approximately the size of an average cell phone. Further, instead of attaching these trackers to a student, students will be asked to carry the trackers with them. In addition to simply carrying a tracker, students will also be asked to check in with authorities five times per day.

What happens if a student forgets to check in or simply forgets a tracker at home? Well, Munoz isn’t playing around when it comes to truancy, and he’ll “…hold them in contempt and they’ll face juvenile detention.” Munoz believes that “…the school has rules and adults have laws,” which means that those teens carrying a truancy tracker better not forget to bring that tracker to school every day.

Teens that are forced to take part in Munoz’s experiment can’t simply drop out of school either - to do so would be in violation of a court order. In fact, Munoz has promised that he will make it his duty to find students who have dropped out and slap them with an arrest warrant.

As for the cost of the program, the funding for the program will come from the Justice of the Peace Technology Fund, and the price of putting together Munoz’s plan will be around $13,000. The aim of the program is to “…get one student out of 10 to graduate…” This may not seem like a lot, but in the town of Bryan, Texas, most students never see graduation day. Whether or not Munoz’s truancy tracker plan will work has yet to be seen, but it’s one way to stop students from skipping school for the time being.

By Greg Bartlett

You care about your kids and want to make sure they’re always safe. But now that they’re in their teens, they don’t exactly want you coming along everywhere they go. And they probably get tired of constant phone calls asking where they’re at and what they’re doing. What if you could know where they’re at all the time without having to follow them everywhere? What if you even got an alert every time they were speeding or could see when they entered a bad neighborhood?

Teen Drivers & GPS

GPS teen tracking has the power to tell you where your kids are all the time. Some parents have even installed the device in the trunk of their teen’s car without having to make an issue of it-the ultimate in non-invasive parenting. And as simple as that, you know where they go. Say goodbye to having to trying to figure out their every move. Your teen can say goodbye to the constant phone calls. You know what’s happening; your teens don’t feel like they’re being micro-managed.

GPS teen tracking has two really big benefits. One of them is safety. Is it really the best for your teen to be going out and absolutely no one knows where they are? With a simple device, you can always know where they are if the need should arise. One parent suspected that their teen might be involved in dangerous behaviors. She simply put a tracking device in his trunk and just like that, she could know what was happening with her son.

But the biggest benefit of GPS teen tracking is peace of mind. You could either wonder all the time and worry because you have no idea what is happening, or you could know. You could have the ability to check where your teen is at any time of the day or night. Surely, that has to be worth the cost of a tracking device!

There is one other interesting benefit that has only come to light more recently. A few months ago, a teenager used GPS data in court. According to a radar gun, he was accused of going almost 20 miles over the speed limit. But GPS data said he was going exactly 45 at the time of the citation. That’s a pretty good defense when you have good technology to back it up!

GPS teen tracking may be just what you’ve been needing to be a responsible parent without driving your teens crazy. Safety and your peace of mind might be as simple as a GPS tracking device.

By Greg Bartlett

As a parent, you know the joys of watching your child experience a myriad of firsts. The first step, the first solid food, the first word—all of these moments are indelibly inscribed in your memory as unforgettable cherished recollections. You know the heartbreak of watching your children experience rejection for the first time and the joy of seeing them succeed, and you wouldn’t trade those experiences for anything in the world. But what if those life altering moments were suddenly stolen from you?

GPS & Children

Kidnappings occur far more often in this country than most people realize and most are perpetrated by someone the child knows and trusts. That’s why parents should invest in a GPS tracking device to protect their children’s safety. You can’t be with your child every moment, but GPS tracking provides you with an extra set of eyes so that your child’s safety is never compromised.

Your GPS tracking device transmitter can be attached to your child’s backpack or clothing and will send a signal to your computer so that you can check on his or her whereabouts at any time. Depending on the model, you can view not only current location, but also a report of movement over time, speed, direction of travel, and number and length of stops made. All of this information can be invaluable to police in the event of a kidnapping.

Training your child to be cautious around strangers is always good strategy, but when your estranged spouse shows up at school and tells your child to get in the car, the child is likely to obey. That’s when your GPS tracking device can be of invaluable service. Many devices come with alert systems that will notify you if your child leaves a designated area. You can set up perimeters around your child’s school, your home, and other places that you frequent. If the GPS tracking device is taken outside those perimeters, you will receive an alert via email or text message, allowing you to immediately check your child’s location and take action if necessary.

No one likes to think about kidnappings, but if the worst happens, you’ll be glad you planned ahead. Nothing is more important than your child’s safety. The next time you smile at one of your child’s firsts, you can congratulate yourself on planning for his safety and your peace of mind by investing in a GPS tracking device.

By Greg Bartlett

What good could a teen tracking GPS do for you? Well, if you are a parent or legal guardian, this nifty device could help you know where your new driver is at any time of day. If you are the new driver, a GPS will help keep you accountable, as well as safe, so that your parents will be able to find you whenever you need help.

Teen Drivers & GPS

GPS tracking has become very useful over the last several years. It can be used to quickly identify the location of an individual and is based on the use of certain satellites and their positions. A wave of energy is transmitted from the GPS device to a satellite, where it is then relayed to a central station that keeps and records the information.

Many parents have thanked GPS technologies for a program called TeenTrak, a type of GPS program that was optional for car installation. They found it to be useful for a variety of reasons. Some parents do not trust their kids with the vehicle; others want to be able to quickly find their child in case of an accident. A teen tracking device may also be useful if your vehicle is stolen, or if your child simply drives away with it after forgetting to tell you where he is going. Police have even found that it is useful to tell them the speed of a teenage driver, or whether that driver has gone beyond enforced boundaries.

You can purchase different types of teen tracking devices. There are GPS systems that will upload information automatically when you hook it to your computer. Other systems are installed into the car. This requires you to work with a company that will forward you the information for a certain fee, whether monthly or yearly. This information can be sent to your computer every minute, five minutes, or some other specified time frame. Certain programs are also able to send this information via text message when requested. Some parents have found it useful not to tell their teens about the tracking device hidden underneath the car. Others have had a special button installed into the car so that their teenager can notify them if an accident or emergency happens.

Teen tracking may be the answer to preventing accidents as well as to keeping teenagers safe as they learn to drive defensively on their own.

by James Neely, freelance writer: click | HERE | to check out GPS products from Rocky Mountain Tracking

From the UK, we hear that some insurance companies are lowering rates for the most at risk drivers - teenagers - when they include active GPS Tracking and monitoring in the vehicles in which they drive.  Is this a good move or an encroachment on these young drivers’ rights?

Car Insurance, Teen Drivers & GPS

It depends on your perspective.  It also depends on your opinion about the view that saving money is more important than giving up a little privacy.  Teens tend to decry the move more than parents.

Insurance Rates and Premiums

The lowering of your premiums and increasing your deductible is a way to put a big dent in your monthly expenses.  This is especially true when you have a teen driver in your household.  So, using GPS Tracking to accomplish this task makes sense.  Your budget suddenly becomes a little easier to live with.  In fact, you could take the savings from your lowered premiums and throw it into a savings account and make some interest on it as well.

Insurance Risk and Benefits

The insurance companies are all about lowering their risk.  Sure, they exist to provide you a valuable service, but they also know that they way to remain profitable is to reduce the amount of claims that they have to pay.  That is why they are embracing GPS Tracking devices.  And not just for families with teenage drivers - businesses can reduce their insurance premiums with GPS Tracking devices on board as well.

Parents Peace of Mind

Parents are all over making sure that their teen drivers act responsibly and do not violate laws or rules while driving.  There are too many stories out there of families that have had sons or daughters ripped from their arms because of irresponsible activities that could have been avoided.  That is why accountability is emphasized and why GPS Tracking devices are at the center of this effort.

It does not take much to save money with GPS Tracking devices and insurance premiums, but consider that it might also save a life and that life could be that of a loved one.  Then, how much is a GPS Tracking device worth?

Rocking Mountain Tracking has the best line-up of GPS Tracking devices to meet any need.  Take a look at their products and options for the best fit for your business.  You will find knowledgeable sales persons in helping you get the best unit to meet your requirements.

By Greg Bartlett

It seems like the last thing you knew, your little girl was just taking her first steps. You watched through the years as she went from wobbling around to chasing her brother while playing tag to competing with her school in soccer. And now she has taken the next big step in her life: she has her driver’s license.

Teen Drivers

Not just a license, either, but a job, soccer practice, high school activities, and everything else that makes you realize that, despite how short it seems, your daughter really is grown up. But you still see her as your little girl, and it’s hard to feel like she’s ready for the responsibility of driving to school, work, soccer practice, and everything else she’s involved in. Of course, she feels ready, and the license she so proudly displays claims that she is, but can you ever really feel like you know that she is ready, and safe?

A GPS tracking device will help. If you use a GPS tracking device in your daughter’s car, you’ll be able to monitor her activities, finding out where she’s been, how fast she’s driving, and whether she’s driving erratically. The GPS device will keep track of any stops the car makes and how long it is at each place, along with the distance to and from the stop. You can receive automatic updates when your daughter reaches school, work, or soccer practice, and before long you can actually relax and enjoy the freedom your daughter’s license brings to you, you’re no longer stuck as the chauffer, but you still know where your daughter is and what she’s doing.

A GPS tracking device will also alert you if your daughter drives over a set speed, perhaps seventy miles an hour, or if she drives during restricted times, perhaps after curfew. Yes, that’s right, it’ll make your parenting easier because now you won’t have to wonder if she’s speeding or whether she snuck out last night. The GPS device will alert you at once.

For most teenagers, getting a license is an important step towards becoming an adult. You don’t want to squelch your daughter’s excitement over her new license nor the freedom that she needs during this next phase of life, but you still want her to be safe. A GPS tracking device will not only help you achieve your goals, it will make your life simpler and a lot more worry-free.