Today I have read a news that highlighted a trend appeared during last years - car manufactures started to convert cars (i.e. just a combination of metal parts moving by a petrol engine) into something I would call a context sensitive vehicle: "Ford's New MyKey System Helps Teens Drive Safer, Conserve Fuel; Gives Parents Peace of Mind". The news says: Ford's MyKey feature -- which debuts next year as standard equipment -- allows owners to program a key that can limit the vehicle's top speed and audio volume. MyKey also encourages safety-belt usage, provides earlier low-fuel warnings, disables switching stability/tracking control systems and can be programmed to sound chimes at 45, 55 and 65 miles per hour.
More than half of parents surveyed worry that their teen-age children are driving at unsafe speeds, talking on hand-held cell phones or texting while driving, or otherwise driving distracted. More than a third of parents also are concerned that their teens do not always buckle their safety belts when driving.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), teens are more likely to take risks such as speeding -- a contributing factor in 30 percent of all fatal crashes. Teens also are less likely to wear safety belts than older drivers.
Notice that this system is not the unique one. For example Green Road's system presented earlier this year is able to identify a lot of different aspects of the drive like acceleration level, breaks using frequency and so forth and report that to the front panel using light of different colours, so you [or parents] can identify the none-econimial driving mode [read unsafe] by the red one or even see that in the real-time if the car was let to a child or a friend of you.
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