Safer Driving Through Technology
Information is power. And it’s hard to feel more powerless than when you hand over your keys to a teenager, and they head off driving. For many parents, the idea is terrifying, and understandably so- they generally won’t have any feedback on their child’s driving.
Hence the need for Lemur’s Safe Driving Monitor. It purports to offer real-time feedback, which had us a bit worried- would parents be tracking their kid’s every bad turn and calling them? Or would kids be watching the monitor, trying to game the system perhaps, or just being distracted?
In fact, it’s nothing quite as troublesome- the display is a key fob, larger than most remote unlock fobs, with simple LCD displays for the few items that are tracked. The unit also boasts of being easy to install, and it was- simply plug the transmitter/recorder into the OBD-II port under the dash on most vehicles. If your car or light truck was manufactured after 1996, you should be fine, and it takes no tools or special skills- just plug in the base unit, sync it with the key fob, and you’re set. Parents can also choose a pin number, preventing anyone else from resetting the data and alerting them if the base unit is removed.
We liked the simplicity- no wires or complex setup. But we weren’t super-impressed with the metrics displayed. Three items are recorded- maximum speed, distance traveled, and sudden brakes- and though the distance traveled may be useful for parents who don’t want to examine the odometer, it doesn’t exactly say much about safety. The values did seem to be pretty accurate, though the sudden brakes didn’t always seem correct. You can display the values in both miles and kilometers, which is good, but we would’ve appreciated an average speed calculation, for example. For $100, it’s a nice and easy way to track your child’s driving, but isn’t quite hackable enough to be useful to adult drivers who may want to monitor their own.
