New Teen Driver Technology Debuts in The 2016 Chevrolet Malibu
Nicole Wakelin
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Chevy helps keep teen drivers safe.
It’s something every parent knows she will have to face one day and seems so far off in the future, but those first 16 years go by in the blink of an eye and suddenly you’re handing over your car keys to your teenager. Yes, it was just yesterday when you were buckling them into a car seat. You do everything you can to make sure they’ll be safe when they’re on their own, make sure they know what to do, but how do you know if they’re really behaving behind the wheel? New Teen Driver technology from Chevrolet can help.
This snazzy new tech debuts in the 2016 Chevrolet Malibu – introduced at the New York International Auto Show – and will help parents monitor their teen’s driving habits so that they can make sure they’re being safe. It starts with muting the car’s audio if the front seat belts aren’t buckled as a little reminder to buckle up.
The volume can also be preset, based on the key fob, so that music can’t be blasting at a ridiculous volume that would cause distraction for your new driver. Additionally, if the vehicle is equipped with active safety features like forward collision alert, stability control, traction control, and rear cross traffic alert, then these features will be automatically turned on and won’t be able to be turned off.
The 2016 Chevy Malibu is helping teens become better drivers. Credit: Chevrolet.com
The Teen Driver system can also keep track of how your teen is driving by providing information on how far and how fast your kid is going on the road. Forward collision alerts, forward collision braking events, and antilock brake events can also be monitored to provide parents the opportunity to discuss driving patterns with their teens.
The idea here isn’t to spy on your teen drivers, but to help them become better drivers. Chevrolet sees this as a teaching tool, one that will open the door for conversations about safe driving. If you discover your child is constantly getting forward collision alerts, then that’s a problem. Talking about why this is happening could help keep those alerts from becoming accidents.
The system is not subscription based and is available as an option on lower trims; it is a standard feature on the Premier trim of the 2016 Chevrolet Malibu. Now you’ve got one more tool for keeping your new teen driver safe on the roads.
