Speedy teens, meet your text messaging foe
Like our own John Paul did with a plug-in mileage cost computer, the Globe's Hiawatha Bray tested another OBD accessory this week - a snitching little black box that sends discreet text messages to parents if a young driver exceeds speed limits. It's so smart that it recognizes highways and major thoroughfares from residential back roads, and if turned off, sends another tattletale to mom and dad.
While certain cars come standard with programmable speed limiters and there's no shortage of GPS tracking devices out there - remember the short-lived Disney cell phone? - there's nothing quite like 20-year-old Jonathan Fischer's Speed Demon.
Fischer, of Lunenberg, Mass., started the project when he was 16 after a local teen died in a high-speed crash, and has since won awards and thousands of dollars to pursue his dreams of entrepreneurship - and to help parents and their new drivers feel safer.
The Speed Demon costs $250 plus $15 per month for unlimited texts and precise mapping of each incident via his website, livefastdriveslow.com. Bray wrote an enthusiastic review, and was indeed annoyed by the alerts as he sped to meet Fischer "before he was old enough to buy beer."
Read more about the Speed Demon and other fun gadgets in Bray's tech lab column.
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about boston overdrive
Boston.com reports the latest trends, auto shows and wrings out the newest cars in our city's hellish maze - and across the great roads of New England.In the garage: 2008 MBTA Zone 1A monthly pass, 1995 21-speed Iron Horse. Bill Griffith is an automotive correspondent for The Boston Globe and has reviewed cars for 10 years. He was also the Globe's assistant sports editor for 25 years and the paper's sports media columnist.
In the garage (over the years): 1956 T-Bird, 1959 Nash Metropolitan, 1980 El Camino, 1997 supercharged Camry TRD.
