The Internet and GPS helping to watch our Teens

Some of you may or may not have teenagers, but I do and she's just about to be legal driving age. So with that in mind, the geek in me is looking for ways I can keep tabs on her once she is driving. While doing some Google searches I turned up Teen Arrive Alive and new program that have that utilizes GPS cell phone technology and the internet to help parents track their young drivers.

Basicly, if your teen has a cell phone that is GPS enabled, their service can track your teen. Then you the parent are able to access the website and get a day to day report of where the went and at what speeds they were traveling with visual help via mapquest. You can even set a "speed limit" and if that is crossed the system can notify you via e-mail. You can also optionally check the system from any phone as well.

Granted the system isn't fool-proof. Any smart teen can just shut their phone off and render the GPS tracking useless, however, what teen turns off their cell phone? Isn't that like social death to them? Anyway, the service costs $20 a month which is cheap piece of mind but does have a $49 setup fee that is going to tweak the nose of any froogle geek. The package isn't without it's merrits however, if you teen currently doesn't have a cell phone is comes with a discount coupon for a cell phone. Teen Arrive Alive also as a bumpersticker program that has a teen specific phone number on it for other drivers to call if your teen isn't behaving like they should with their car/truck.

All in all it appears to be a good program and one that I very well may be looking into shortly. First however, I must replace the clutch that my daughter has managed to finish off in the truck.