When Ben Ellison, 15, gets his driver's license next month, he dreams of driving a midnight blue, low-riding Honda with monster horsepower, a performance exhaust system and, inside, blue neon rods that glow with each bass beat from the stereo.
Instead, he'll drive a Mazda, with a computer chip that spies on every ride.
A device called a CarChip lets Phil Bowman and Susan Schauer look through speed and other data from the trips of their teenager, Ben Ellison.
(Marvin Joseph -- The Washington Post)
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Audio: The Post's Elizabeth Williamson discusses the high tech ways that parents are monitoring their teenage drivers.
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Video: The Post's Elizabeth Williamson discusses ways to help parents curb their teen's risky driving habits.
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Accident Victims: The number of young people killed in traffic accidents has surged in the Washington region.
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"If I wasn't into tuning my car, I think maybe this wouldn't have happened," Ben said last week, swinging his Mazda 626 onto a highway in Easton, Md., on a practice drive as he -- and the monitor -- noted his speed.
"It's pretty cool technology and all," he said, glancing at the matchbook-size device plugged into the steering column near the knees of his cargo pants. "But after a while, this is going to be so annoying."
Figuring their children are better off annoyed than dead, parents have opened a new front in the battle to lower teenagers' accident rates. Using technology employed by truck fleets to monitor drivers, 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; Global Positioning System devices that track teenagers through their cell phones; and lower-tech surveillance, such as the Tell-My-Mom.com bumper sticker.
"No one's done a study yet that shows these new methods work," said Ronald Knipling, a research scientist at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute who has led a research forum on electronic monitoring. "But it's a very promising idea."
Ben voiced the reaction of many teens. "My friends," he said, turning his car toward home, "think it's whack."
Before his practice drive last week, Ben sat in the living room of his family's waterfront house on the Eastern Shore hearing, one more time, why CarChip is a good idea.
"It's not that I'm worried about your skills. . . . I'm worried about your judgment, which comes as you get older," said his stepfather, Phil Bowman, who bought the $140 device. "It's a way to prove your ability to be out there on your own."
Bowman, originally from Bethesda, said that when he was young, he got so many speeding tickets that his license was suspended.
"But I don't want to be judged by your mistakes," Ben replied.
Ben's mother, Susan Schauer, said that when she can't be in the passenger seat, "you know there's a device that's paying attention."
"I feel old enough to start gaining some privacy," Ben said.
"I don't think how you drive is private," his stepfather responded.
