Ford put's on it's "Big Brother" t-shirt...
 

Borderline "big brotherish" but a really cool concept nonetheless...

Now that my two boys are starting to talk about driving in a few years, I'd like to find out if I could trade those numbers to make it 44mph max and 80% stereo volume...might as well throw out that "sustaining chime if the seatbelts aren't being used" and give me a complete shutdown mode with auto dial my cell phone.

I think the most important part is getting them to focus on the road and driving, not music and talking to their friends. I think the SYNC system is one of the voice activated bluetooth systems which helps with that, even more so if it works with a phone as well.

Neat idea, I'm interested in seeing if it works. Any new feature they can come up with that might increase their market share is a good thing at this point, especially one that is relatively inexpensive to impliment.

Though, since it's key-based, all the kid would have to do is switch their key with their parents'. Eh, oh well. Nothing is perfect.

Neat idea, but 80 mph? I hope they don't plan on marketing to many east coasters, because that's well above the typical highway speed limit.

I don't think I would have minded these sorts of restrictions when I was a kid, and I have 10 years before I have to make a decision about my son driving, so we'll see where technology goes by then.

One thing that the system is missing; a box to put the cell phone in, which locks once the car is put into gear, and the car won't work without the cell phone in there. No idea how to actually accomplish that, but it would be nice...

The reason for this is probably risk management and liability issues.

Ford have to argue that there are circumstances where it is safer to speed than not to (avoiding an accident etc), otherwise they would be subject to duty of care cases where people killed by speeding drivers bring class actions arguing that manufacturing a car CAPABLE of speeding led to the road deaths.

By setting the limit ABOVE the max speed restriction of the roads they can argue that it prevents kiddies having access to racing speeds, but allows them to power out of danger.

now that is cool and should save some lives

I give it about 15 minutes until someone has located and made a replacement for the chip. I had my top speed governor out the day I got my first car.