The MyMazda app’s ability to let parents monitor their newly licenced teenager’s driving, and even impose speed limits and curfew times, could just be the greatest innovation since the mobile phone itself.

By Stephen Corby and Connor Corby

Dad’s View

The pivotal moment at which your child is handed their P-plates is one of powerful and violently conflicting emotions. On the one, soft, squidgy little hand that I used to hold, my boy was now a man, grabbing his freedom along with those two flimsy plastic plates with the red ‘P’s on them with both of his hairy-knuckled ones, and the emotions are pride, relief (120 hours of driver training is a lot) and a vibration of vicarious joy jumping.

On the other fist-balled hand of fear, I was being gut-punched by the terrible realisation that Connor, 17, would now be heading out on the roads, on his own, without me there to literally look out for him, surrounded by one of the most frightening dangers in all the world - “other drivers”.

There is a graphic graph in the Learner Manual you are given when your child gets their L-plates in NSW that shows the frequency of accidents causing injury or death across a person’s driving career. The number for L-plate drivers is encouragingly low, but straight after that, in the first year of the red Ps, there is a precipitous spike that can cause nausea for any parent looking at it.

I suddenly looked at all those L-plate training hours very differently. At least I was there, watching and advising, effectively with my arms still around him as much as possible, but now he would be on his own. Gulp.

But what if there was a way to keep those protective arms of mine around him, at least remotely and electronically like some giant robotic claw things, day and night? In a world in which we take it for granted that we can pick up our smart phones and see where our teenagers are - unless they’ve “accidentally” turned off Find My iPhone again - surely there was a tech answer to my terror?

Thankfully, Mazda had the answer, via the incredibly clever and yet little-known Driver Alerts settings in the MyMazda app. Once it was explained to me that I’d be able to set speed limits, curfew times and even Restricted Areas, which would allow me to monitor Connor’s driving behaviour, I was outside a Mazda dealer waving my wallet, and my smart phone, within the hour.

Or, at very least, I arranged to borrow a stylish, and substantive, new Mazda CX-80 to put the system to the test. This would mean allowing my son to drive this large and luxurious SUV, which would be quite a step up from the Mazda 3-sized, very second-hand vehicle he’d learned to drive in. But you catch more flies with honey, of course, and he was far more likely to agree to this level of oversight if it came with a brand new car to drive his mates around in.

Setting up the MyMazda app was as simple as scanning the VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) in the driver’s door frame and then accessing the Driver Alerts. I could instantly draw a line around how far I thought he should be allowed to go from the safety of our suburb, and I would get a message on my phone should he dare to stray.

Similarly, I could, and did, set a speed limit beyond which I would be alerted to his misdeeds (I started at 50km/h, before agreeing that this was slightly unrealistic and setting it at 75km/h), and I set a curfew of 11pm, because nothing good happens on the roads after that. Or not if you’re 17, anyway.

And so I sent the Boy Wonderful out into the world, after explaining to him, in detail, that I would be absolutely and instantaneously aware if he did anything wrong, and sat back with a shiver and a sigh.

I don’t like to exaggerate, so I won’t say it took fewer than five minutes for the first alerts to come through on my phone about him speeding, but it was definitely less than 10 minutes. I then had to wait for him to stop so I could call and… discuss this with him, because I don’t want him to talk on the phone while driving (and it’s illegal).

Over the next week we had several… discussions - some might call them disputes - about just how accurately he was keeping to the speed limit, but the main thing was that the number of alerts gradually tailed away to almost nothing.

And he did no damage to the big Mazda, nor suffered any incidents at all. I must have been a good teacher.

Connor’s View

As someone who was born in 2007, the same year as the iPhone, I have not known an age without technology and its consequences. The predominance of social media, constant all feel like things that were in place before I was able to articulate that my nappy needed changing.

As such, the concept of driving a car that can not only monitor but dob you in to your parents, instantly, sits in the same long-suffering space as screen-time limits for me.

Or it did, until I tried it, at which point creeping feelings of horror and resentment washed over me. It’s one thing for your Dad to know where you are, but another for him to know exactly what you’re doing.

And besides that, we’re talking about driving here, and let’s face it, gaining your licence is one of the first major steps towards becoming an adult and a genuinely momentous moment in time. Finally graduating from the dastardly yellow L plates after 120 gruelling hours spent with a passenger-seat parent feels similar, I imagine, to the idea of religious rapture. Except that instead of ascending to heaven you go somewhere even better: Service NSW, where my P plates were handed to me like rather thin stone tablets.

The freedom and responsibility that come with the first solitary drive as a newly licensed individual are unparalleled; the potential of the open road and the weight of the wheel in your hands provide the first real and thrilling sense of individualism and maturity you acquire as an adolescent.

If P-plates are akin to a baby bird leaving the nest for the first time and having the freedom to soar the open skies with liberty, the MyMazda app’s Driving Limitations are the equivalent of that baby bird finding it’s still tethered with a rope around one leg.

I can, of course, see how this would appeal to some kind of helicopter parents on steroids - A380 parents perhaps - who are as comfortable with the idea of their child growing up as they are with the idea of eating glass.

The car itself, subtracting its Big Brother-ish dystopian powers, was not so surprisingly a joy to pilot. Having learnt to drive in a second-hand Volkswagen Golf, the CX-80 felt like a premium subscription for my P-plates. 

The Golf, being a manual, forced me to grow accustomed to a heavily engaging and busy driving style, but the CX-80 felt effortless, thanks to its smooth and easy going eight-speed automatic (who knew cars could have more than six gears), and its suspension, which, compared to the Golf, felt as if I was floating above the road in a Millennium Falcon-esque spacecraft in the best way possible.

Speaking of space, another gargantuan difference between my usual car and the spacious seven-seater Mazda was, of course, size. Never before had I operated a car in which I could look down at other drivers as I passed them by, while remaining cautious not to alert the ever-present speed-monitoring app.

The sheer size of the car felt like a combination of a safety bubble and a superiority complex, giving me an elevated view of the road and a surrounding shell of armour that, thankfully, I didn’t put to the collision test. 

Being the only adolescent in my half-dozen-sized friend group who has a licence, I’m constantly the designated driver, which does at least come with some perks (I can’t count the amount of free Maccas meals I’ve been given as bribery for riding shotgun).

The issue with the Golf is that I have more friends than seats, which leads to many borderline friendship-ending arguments over who gets to ride along. In that regard, the Mazda was the answer to all my problems as I could fit seven of us in, and transport my friends in a far more spacious and smooth style than they are familiar with.

By the end of our week together I’d grown quite accustomed to the luxury spaceship CX-80. Not only did I feel like it had literally and figuratively elevated my driving lifestyle, but I’d even become used to being monitored by the MyMazda app. If you don’t speed, or go anywhere, it’s easy to stay out of trouble. 

I just wish my father would shut up about it.