How To Watch Over Your Teen’s Driving

*  As a Straight Talk Tester, I have been given monthly service and a phone to use throughout the remainder of the year.  All opinions are my own.

Does it drive you crazy when your teenage son or daughter is using your car and you have no control as to how they are driving, if they are driving somewhere else than where they said, or whether your car is in good shape (to prevent unexpected breakdowns) in the first place?  Part of growing up is giving your children more space to allow them to do so.

Nonetheless, when you gave them their first cellphone, didn’t you impose a few limits and rules?  If you’re like most parents, you still occasionally check their text messages and monitor their apps and talk time to ensure they are being responsible.  A natural extension of this process would carry on into their car use, right?  After all, the car can be a much more dangerous tool than a cellphone, right?  There are a number of apps out there to help you monitor your teenager in the car when you’re not there, but none of them provides the comprehensive monitoring that Straight Talk’s new Safe Driver Car Connection can.

As a part of the #StraightTalkTesters program, we had the opportunity to try out the Safe Driver Car Connection device which is a small unit that you plug into your car’s OBD II port.  This is the same port mechanics use to do a diagnostics test on your car to see where problems are or if there are any current recalls on your car’s model.  The Safe Driver Car Connection device works on most cars made after 2003.  To ensure it will work on your car you can check here.

To use the Safe Driver Car Connection, you first need to buy service from Straight Talk, as the device houses an actual GPS chip and wireless data so you can keep track of your car, even when it’s not near you.  You can purchase 30 days of Straight Talk for only $10 or a year plan for $100 at your local Walmart or online at StraightTalkConnectedLife.com.

Features:

Safe Driver Car Connection includes a number of helpful features to help you gauge your teen’s safety:

1. Vehicle Location – You can view where your car is or where it is heading as it’s driving.  A very cool feature – what parent wouldn’t want to know this info at times?
2. Safety Zones – Safety Zones allow you to set up a geo-fence – or boundary – around a particular location.  Safety Zones are helpful in:
   1. Putting a zone around your car at home so you know when your teen is leaving or arriving home.
   2. Placing a zone around a place you know your teen is traveling to so you know when your child arrives.
   3. Setting up a zone on the outskirts of your city, so if your teen crosses it, you know they are driving somewhere they shouldn’t be.
3. Restrict Text Usage – With an additional free app, ZoomSafer, ( for  Android, Blackberry, and iOS), you can block texting and phone usage while the car is in use.  You hope your teen won’t do these activities, but it’s best to be safe.  And if they are texting and driving before using the Safe Driver Car Connection…they won’t be anymore!
4. Driver Scoring – You will actually get a score from 0 to 100 as to how good your driving is, based on whether you are excessively speeding or breaking, how many sharp turns you take, even excessive idling.
5. Vehicle Health – in addition to monitoring the driver, Safe Driver Car Connection monitors the health of your car.  It will tell you if your car needs service or if there is a recall on your car.

Here’s What the Safe Driver Car Connection Can Do

As some of you know, I do not have a teen driver in my house yet, so I had no recourse except to put the Safe Driver Car Connection device on my husband’s car.   Although he objected initially, it’s one of the side effects of being married to one well connected mom!  Poor guy, I really do feel sorry for him, he is often a guinea pig for a number of devices and contraptions!

After installing the device in his car (which came with 10 free days of Straight Talk service) and setting up a Car Connection account, I was ready to see what the device…and my husband could do.

I set up my preferred methods of communication so I would be alerted when he practiced unsafe driving practices or when he drove in or out of a safety zone.

Soon after I put the Safe Driver Car Connection on my husband’s car, we took of on two separate road trips.  One local to Newport Beach, about 45 minutes away and one to Phoenix, AZ, about 5 1/2 hours away.  I love the mini maps the Car Connection app gives you for every time you turn on the car and drive it somewhere.

Here’s the mini map the Car Connection app showed for going to Newport Beach.  As one of the settings in the app, you list the average price of gasoline in your area.  I listed ours as $4.30/gal. here in Southern California.  I was surprised to see that one trip down to Newport Beach cost us nearly $11.  I also discovered that my husband’s office, just 8.3 miles away costs $2 to travel to, so it costs $4 round trip for his daily commute.  I was able to add a picture of our steering wheel and dash to personalize this screen.

The Safe Driver Car Connection automatically logs where the car is roughly every 5 minutes.  As you can see from this map of our trip from California to Phoenix, there are a lot of green dots – if you zoom in on them (in the app), each of them has a number in succession so you can see in which direction the car was driving.  Clicking on the green circle will tell you where the car was, what time it was, and what speed the car was going.

Have you ever lost your car in a crowded parking lot?  Or perhaps forgotten where you parked after a nice getaway vacation?  In the Car Connection app, you can click on the “Locate Now” button at the bottom of this screen and get walking directions to your car, courtesy of  Google!

Along our drive to Phoenix AZ, I received several emails on how my husband was driving.  It was pretty funny receiving these emails while sitting right next to him…he had no idea.  I had more information on his driving  than he had!  When I looked at the Car Connection app, here is what I saw, concisely organized.

So in addition to receiving the emails, I could look at the app to see what was going on.  Truthfully, I didn’t notice the sharp turns or the excessive speeding, but then again, I’m used to it after 18 fun years of marriage!  The “High G Event” apparently relates to a sharp turn or fast acceleration with hard breaking.

I didn’t place any safety zones for my husband, but I put one in for Disneyland to show you how you could use the Car Connection app to ensure that your teen has arrived safely at their destination as well as to know when s/he left.  I placed a zone around the parking structure at Disneyland.  Once a teen enters the zone…or leaves…you are notified.

The Straight Talk Safe Driver Car Connection sells for $139.99 at Walmart.com and and StraightTalk.com and comes with 10 free days of Straight Talkservice.  You can purchase 30 days of Straight Talk service for $10 if you are just interested for a short stint, like say a road trip your teen is taking, or you can buy a full year for $100.  The beauty with Straight Talk is that there is no contract.  You can turn on or turn off service after you have used your time.

The free Car Connection app is available for both Apple and Android phones.

A Mom’s Perspective

There’s no doubt that the Straight Talk Safe Driver Car Connection device is a great device for keeping an eye on your teen driver…or even your elderly parents. But it can also be used as a communication tool to help your teen drive more safely, which will likely prevent accidents as well as help you conserve costly fuel.  As you are in the car with your driver, you will receive email’s or text messages telling you about any unsafe driving maneuvers.  Right there as you are both in the car, you can make recommendations so your teen can be more aware of his/her unsafe practices in the future.

You can also use this safe driver monitor to instill good safe driving by giving your teen rewards for improving their score…perhaps more time in the car or a wider span on their city boundaries.

Do you have more than one teen driver driving different cars?  No problem, you can move the Safe Driver Car Connection device from car to car as needed.

Looking for more ways to keep an eye on things?  Straight Talk just came out with another new monitoring device called the Remote Alert System, which has a built-in wireless module and can send texts to up to 3 people or make a phone call to up to 5 people when a sensor in your home has been triggered.  The Remote Alert System comes with a wireless controller, and a wireless motion sensor to detect movement.  Additionally, you can purchase a magnetic door sensor (to let you know when a door has been opened), a remote key chain fob so you can disarm the device when you arrive home, and additional motion sensors.  The Remote Alert System is available through Walmart.com and StraightTalk.com starting at $129.99.  You will also need to purchase Straight Talk Service to support the Remote Alert system messaging.