MyKey from Ford - An ingenious way to set restrictions on your car when others are driving it

There is always news features telling us how expensive insurance for teenagers and newly qualified drivers are, the statistics show that the majority of drivers under 21 will have to pay in excess of £1,500 for car insurance. Many report that they have been quoted as much as £3,000 for third party insurance on a car worth just £1,000, fortunately for their parents they do not have this problem as experience counts and most adults who have held their licence for at least a few years will find that their insurance is less than £500. It is very tempting to just add your children to you policy and get them to pay the increase, but what happens when they speed, refuse to wear a seatbelt or have the music blasting from the stereo?

Now you don’t have to worry about what your teenagers are doing as car manufacturer Ford have come up with an ingenious way to keep in control on their vehicles without having to be present. MyKey was introduced to all Ford vehicles in America and went down a storm so much so that all cars sold in the US now come with MyKey as standard. As of next year all Ford cars in the UK will also have MyKey.

What is MyKey?

MyKey is an electronic system that allows the owner of the car to program it with restrictions when other drivers may use it; at the moment it is parents who will mostly benefit from MyKey as it will allow them to add ‘parental controls’ to allow the car to be driven safely and abide by the law. MyKey is activated when the special second car key is used to drive the vehicle as it has been pre-programmed with limitations and alerts.

Here is a breakdown of what MyKey can do

• It will have a limit to the top speed it can be driven at and alerts when the driver hits certain speeds such as 45mph, or 80mph.
• Volume will also be limited so the driver will only be able to have it at the maximum of 44% and no higher.
• MyKey will also alert the driver when fuel is running low, instead of the standard 50 miles to empty, the driver will be alerted when they have just 75 miles of fuel left.
• There is also a belt minder that will alert the driver for the duration of use, chiming every minute to alert them to connect the belt to the buckle instead of chiming every minute for 5 minutes before being muted.
• Another smart feature to this system is that there is an emergency assistance feature that will alert emergency services with the co-ordinates of the crash should one occur. It’s not only young male teenagers that speed but girls too although male teens account for 30% and females 21% or speeding.

As nearly 50% of parents worry about speeding, MyKey will almost certainly prove as successful here as it did in the US as parents were most likely to lend their car to their teenagers without the fear of the most common mistakes they tend to make.

Internet forums are already buzzing as they state that teenagers will find a way to override the system as they have done for mopeds and scooters, we will have to wait until next year to see if it works!