Ford MyKey - Forget Big Brother, here's Big Mother...

Ford recently announced an upcoming feature which will allow owners to program one of the car's keys to cause the car to behave in extra-safe ways, such as limiting top speed and stereo volume, using more persistent/annoying reminders to buckle seatbelts, and earlier warning of low fuel. The intention is that parents give these programmed keys to their kids to keep them in check - kind of like giving the valet parker a key that doesn't open the glovebox. And despite feeling a bit restrictive (and surely incurring the resentment of the offspring involved), it actually seems pretty useful - building these features into the guts of the car itself, rather than tacking them on as after-market add-ons, means they'll be much tougher to disable. The specific features all seem reasonable and well thought out as well - seatbelts, speed, stereo, and gas would be the first things I'd think of for safe and responsible driving. Now, will they build in a feature that shuts down the engine at curfew? Or maybe it's too "Cinderella" to have a Ford Focus turn into a pumpkin at midnight...
[via Autoblog and Engadget]