Imagine a car key that knows when a seat belt is not buckled.
The key sends a signal to the car which causes a continuous tone to sound and keeps the radio muted.
Once hte seat belt is buckled, the tone stops and the radio starts playing.
A normal key can’t do that, but a MyKey can.
MyKey is a technology designed by Ford that parents can use to set limits on teeen drivers.
It will first appear on the 2010 Ford Focus, and will be standard, no extra charge feature.
Brian Bohman, sales manager at Brian Bemis Ford, 1370 DeKalb Ave. in Sycamore, said the technology is found in both the key and the car.
“The key itself is different from regular car keys,” Bohman said. “There’s a chip inside the key. When you start the car, it recognizes the MyKey and automatically sets limits.”
MyKey limits the top speed of the car to 80 mph and will coninuously chime until the seat belt is buckled, among other functions.
It also has certain safety features like blind spot monitoring, that cannot be deactivated, said Bohman.
“There have been a lot of studies about teen drivers and making poor choices. The MyKey feature reinforces positive behavior and eliminates some distractions,” Bohman said.
Wow. So what do you think? Good idea by Ford? Bad idea by Ford? Do you think parents will abuse this?
I am going to ask Mr. Smacktard to refrain from politicizing this thread like he has the past few threads. This is about a car, not a government! Please keep that in mind if you choose to respond.
Other than that, I think it’s a pretty good idea. I think if they coupled this with fingerprint scanning technology on the key, we could better secure our vehicles and make our lives easier.
1) We could have the car automatically adjust all the mirrors and seats back to their preset locations based on our fingerprint. (We would have to initialize them, obviously.)
2) The radio could be tuned to our favorite station and favorite volume not to mention the heat/air could also be set!
3) If we could incorporate voice recognition we could eliminate a lot of distractions as well and deny many excuses drivers (not just teen) have not to have BOTH hands on the wheel like is the law in most places.
4) With the MyKey parents could actually enforce curfew a little easier. (Set the key to no longer work after Midnight resulting in children having to call mommy and daddy to come get them if they stay out too late.) Maybe even put a program in there that automatically dials the parent’s cell phone for permission to start the car each time and the parent has to put in a 4 digit pin or something could work too.