Monitoring young drivers

Parents are beginning to employ technology used by trucking companies to monitor their young drivers. "Figuring their children are better off annoyed than dead ... families are spending as much as $2,500 for microcomputers and 'black boxes' that feed speed and braking data into a home computer; cockpit video cameras; [and] Global Positioning System devices that track teenagers," the Washington Post reports. The Post leads with the example of soon-to-be driver's-license-holder Ben Ellison, whose new Mazda now has "a matchbook-size device plugged into the steering column near the knees of his cargo pants." But that's about half the battle - do these things monitor cell-phone texting and talking? In a story about whether laws against using handheld phones while driving do a bit of good, the New York Times has it that "no one doubts that using a cellphone can cause lapses in attention.... The question, at one time, was whether that was any worse than, say, unwrapping a cheeseburger or lighting a cigarette. Now it's also a question of whether a cellphone is more of a hazard than playing a DVD, using the calendar or email functions on a wireless hand-held device, or picking out a playlist on an iPod." My guess is, texting and MP3 players have just as much impact on driver safety as velocity. Studies are showing, the Times adds, that - even where just talking on the phone is concerned - it's the distraction of the conversation itself, not the act of dialing or holding the phone, that accounts for increased risk. I am *really* not suggesting we should monitor every move our children make - only that driver safety solutions, like online safety ones, are as individual as children are.