Photo: Wikipedia
There are no words in this world to describe that feeling you get when you give your teenage son the keys to your car for the first time. It’s fear, regret, proudness, and a few other all mixed up into a soup of emotion that’s hard to contain.
But before you know it, the keys are long gone from your hand and so is your kid, off to meet with who knows who and to do who knows what. But don’t worry, the kid is going through a similar potpourri of emotions that makes their stomach feel as if somebody is twisting it in opposite directions at both ends.
However, that doesn’t last forever, and soon enough they’ll feel like they are natural born racing drivers, and that’s when handing out those keys becomes even more painful. The good news is that there are ways to make this whole experience considerably easier for you. The bad news is that the Stig wannabes aren’t going to like it.
There are several solutions out there on the market, but this connected car add-on from Horizon seems to tick all the right boxes. As it stands now, the Hum offers a limited set of features such as roadside assistance, stolen vehicle tracking, vehicle health monitoring and, of course, hands-free calling capabilities.
An upgrade planned for this month will add to this list of features, enabling owners to receive alerts on their mobile phones each time the vehicle exceeds a pre-imposed speed limit, as well as when it exits a certain area. In other words, the young ones won’t be able to go anywhere outside a specific zone without you knowing it, and they can’t go faster than you told them to without having a good old spanking in store when they get home.
Obviously, the system can’t actually prevent the car from exiting the pre-set area or going faster than the scheduled speed, but the fact that they know the parents receive a detailed report every time they misbehave should be a strong enough deterrent and should prevent any young driver from doing something they know won’t sit well with their folks.
The system can be used for other purposes as well, such as equipping a fleet of vehicles and keeping tabs on what the drivers are doing, for example. Verizon is charging $14.99 per month for Hum, but there is no upfront cost.
However, that doesn’t last forever, and soon enough they’ll feel like they are natural born racing drivers, and that’s when handing out those keys becomes even more painful. The good news is that there are ways to make this whole experience considerably easier for you. The bad news is that the Stig wannabes aren’t going to like it.
There are several solutions out there on the market, but this connected car add-on from Horizon seems to tick all the right boxes. As it stands now, the Hum offers a limited set of features such as roadside assistance, stolen vehicle tracking, vehicle health monitoring and, of course, hands-free calling capabilities.
An upgrade planned for this month will add to this list of features, enabling owners to receive alerts on their mobile phones each time the vehicle exceeds a pre-imposed speed limit, as well as when it exits a certain area. In other words, the young ones won’t be able to go anywhere outside a specific zone without you knowing it, and they can’t go faster than you told them to without having a good old spanking in store when they get home.
Obviously, the system can’t actually prevent the car from exiting the pre-set area or going faster than the scheduled speed, but the fact that they know the parents receive a detailed report every time they misbehave should be a strong enough deterrent and should prevent any young driver from doing something they know won’t sit well with their folks.
The system can be used for other purposes as well, such as equipping a fleet of vehicles and keeping tabs on what the drivers are doing, for example. Verizon is charging $14.99 per month for Hum, but there is no upfront cost.
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