Young Taupo entrepreneurs' key to reducing youth crashes

It may not be a popular idea with their peers - but they're hoping it'll be a real hit with the parents.

Young entrepreneurs and Taupo-nui-a-Tia College students Ryan White and Louis Scrivener, both 18, have come up with the bright idea of a device to install in cars which collects data on where the car goes, at what times and how fast. It will sync to an app for parents which will allow them to monitor whether their teenagers are complying with the conditions of their restricted driver's licence.

The idea grew from their Year 13 Young Enterprise Scheme project and they hope their company Key Ideas NZ's mission statement - to reduce serious crashes and deaths on New Zealand roads among youth drivers - will soon become reality.

It works via a device that plugs into a car's OBD2 (on board diagnostics) slot. The OBD2 normally provides access to data from the engine control unit for technicians. But it can also be used for plug and play devices, including data loggers, and that's what Ryan and Louis want to use to send signals via SMS (text) message to a database and from there to an account on the Key Ideas NZ app.

Louis says the device is a simplified version of devices that big fleet managers, such as truck companies, use.

"We just want it to be really simple and easy to use.

"They [the car owner] plug it in and they can set restrictions of the times that the driver can drive for and the areas that they can drive in, and speed restrictions.

"If you say to your child 'you can't go out of town today or only go here', you can set the boundary and you'll be able to see where they are with the GPS so it can be like a black box as well. So it will show what the last movements was and what speed they were going."

The app will give reports of the number of kilometres driven and where, fuel efficiency and how long the car has been driven for. It will also make it easier to track if it is stolen.

As well as parents being able to view the data, the teenagers will also have access - but will not be able to change the settings.

Louis says while many of their Year 13 peers said the device would be "stitching them up" with their parents, they also grudgingly admitted it was a good idea because restricted licence conditions are widely flouted.

"They know it's going to reduce people driving dangerously. Restricted drivers have the biggest percentage of crashes and fatalities on the road and they know their age group quite often do stupid things on the road and they know it's going to reduce that. They said that their parents will know what they're doing so that's a bad thing, but they also think it's a good idea."

Louis and Ryan do not plan to charge an installation or hardware fee for the device, but users will pay a monthly subscription fee of around $20.

The pair have got as far as developing their own demonstration app to show developers what they want the real version to look like. They're now trying to raise the money they need to carry on bringing their vision to reality, about $20,000.

The entrepreneurs also want to team up with groups such as SADD (Students Against Dangerous Driving), insurance companies and the AA.