Many parents fear handing their car keys over to their teenagers, but what if a parent could track the teen's every move while the youth was on the road?

Plug-N-Track, made by Tucson-based Gateway Communications Inc., is a small box that plugs into a car's diagnostic port. It allows you to track your vehicle's movement, speed, acceleration and deceleration patterns online and through text message, said Jon Rowley, president of Gateway Communications.

While GPS driving-habit trackers are the current trend in safe-driving promotion, with at least 10 different products available online, Rowley said he used his 25 years of experience designing fleet-tracking systems to help Plug-N-Track stand out in the market.

"What makes us unique is being able to quickly, with no professional installers, plug it in to the vehicle," Rowley said. "Simplicity is what makes it really, really nice."

Plug-N-Track retails for $299.99 and requires a monthly service fee of $19.99. Other simular products can run anywhere from $195 for the unit with a $40 monthly tracking fee to $470, also with a $40 monthly fee.

Once users plug the device into their cars, they can then track their vehicles through an online program, similar to Google Maps, or they can text-message the system and receive real-time updates listing the cars' cross streets, their direction and their speed.

Russ Rader, a spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, said that while driver-tracker systems have been shown to decrease dangerous driving tendencies, there is some doubt about whether they will really catch on in the market.

A 2009 Insurance Institute for Highway Safety study, meant to test the influence of these devices on driver tendencies, actually had a hard time recruiting participants because, Rader said, parents did not want to offend their teenagers by showing they did not trust them behind the wheel.

Steve Witmer, a spokesman for American Family Insurance, said since his company began using a video-based in-car monitoring system, it has seen more than a 70 percent decrease in risky driving behaviors. While the in-car cameras have also been met with some reluctance, Witmer said, teen driver monitoring systems lead to greater trust between the teens and their parents, which then helps teens gain more on-road freedom.

"(Driving) is a lot of responsibility to put in the hands of a beginning driver and hope that things somehow turn out OK," Witmer said.

In addition to the real-time tracking service, Rowley said, Plug-N-Track users can upgrade to a weekly reporting system for $24.95 per month.

As part of this program, the company will e-mail parents "Dashboard Reports" that give the car's driver either a green, yellow or red light, based on driving habits during the previous week, Rowley said. The report also will compare a teen's driving patterns with those of other drivers in a peer demographic group.

Using the system, parents can also set up boundaries, based on the time of day, and be notified every time the vehicle either enters or exits those areas, he said.

The company is negotiating to make the device available at a nationwide drugstore chain, Rowley said, and is also speaking with a "major" insurance company about offering Plug-N-Track to its customers.

"The idea is to make it simple for the parents," Rowley said. "We don't want, nor expect, parents to constantly be on a web browser or watching Google maps and watching a pin move along Tucson. The idea is you really just want to know if something is wrong."

Contact NASA Space Grant intern Ian Friedman at 434-4083 or at friedman@azstarnet.com