Ford MyKey Puts Restraints On Teenage Drivers, Whilst Annoying Adults

Ford’s MyKey system is a great concept in theory, until you start thinking about all the beeping that’ll be going on. My Focus already incessantly beeps if someone forgets to put on their seatbelt. The device has a lot of almost useful features, mostly having to do with getting your kids to drive safely. I doubt this is something I’d implement in my own driving, but if you have wreckless childrens driving your vehicle it might be funny to watch them get annoyed as the “borrowed” car continuously tells them what they’re doing wrong.

When engaged the MyKey will cap the top speed at 80MPH. Um, OK then. That’s still higher than the average speed limit across the US. The problem starts with the following: a chime will go off whenever you hit 45MPH, 55MPH and 65MPH. If you’ve ever driven a car you know that you can jump up and down around the speed limit when driving. Even if you’re trying to maintain legal speed limit this happens to the best of us. So that means during a nice long trip you’ll be hearing the chime continuously until you snap and drive the offending vehicle into the nearest ravine.

It’s supposed to alert drivers of how much they’re accelerating. MyKey also limits the stereo’s volume. I can just imagine all of the kids who put more money into a car’s sound system than they spent on the car being very happy with that “feature.” Finally the MyKey device will chime when you’re 75 miles from empty. With the dings and lights of low fuel alerts in cars now I find this absurdly redundant.

Of course I’m looking at this from the point of someone without kids, and I won’t have any of a driving age for many years. So it’s all just annoying bleeps and boops to me. MyKey will be available on the 2010 Ford Focus and later on in other models.