Researchers at AT&T have a prototype app that could theoretically in the future track the driving habits of teenagers, or really anyone, on the road.
The app uses data from drivers with a smartphone as well as tracking data already built into cars. It combines these forces to determine a wealth of statistics for a particular driver’s habits such as beginning location, destination, time driving, speed, and much more.
“It allows you, as a parent, to monitor kids’ driving behavior in real time. And if your kid is SMS-ing while driving, you will be able to log it—and even remotely disable the phone,” said Raz Dar, AT&T’s business incubator manager based in Ra’anana, Israel. “The only thing he could do to prevent it is take out the unit from the car—unplug it—but we can detect that, too, and send an alert.” Those untrustworthy teenagers driving to an “innocent” friend’s house are no match for the latest mobile technology.
This prototype app would function by gathering all the information normally logged by a car like acceleration, steering, braking, GPS, etc. along with any other stats from the smartphone in the car. This jumble of knowledge goes up to AT&T’s servers for analyzation and beamed back down the parent’s app for tracking.
You can see that while this service is aimed toward parents with risky teenagers, anyone wishing to monitor a driver who has proven to be untrustworthy can use the app. It’s a far-off concept for now, but it’s still an amusing glimpse at the future.