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FORD’S INNOVATIVE MYKEY SYSTEM HELPS TEENS DRIVE SAFER, CONSERVE
FUEL; GIVES PARENTS PEACE OF MIND
MyKey®, another innovation from the company that introduced SYNC®, allows parents to
limit speed and audio volume to encourage teens to drive safer and improve fuel efficiency
Harris Interactive Survey shows that many parents would allow teens to drive more often if
their vehicle was equippedwith MyKey – helping young drivers build road safety experience
MyKey debuted as a standard feature on the 2010 Ford Focus and is now a no-cost feature on
nearly all Ford and Lincoln models
WASHINGTON, D.C., Jan. 26, 2011 – Ford Motor Company’s innovative MyKey technology is
designed to help parents encourage their teenagers to drive safer and more fuel efficiently, and
increase safety-beltuse.
Ford’s MyKey feature – which debuted as standard equipment on the 2010 Ford Focus and is now
standard on nearly all Ford and Lincoln models – allows owners to program a key that can limit the
vehicle’s top speed and audio volume. MyKey also encourages safety-belt use, provides earlier
low-fuel warnings and can be programmed to sound chimes at 45, 55 and 65 mph.
“Ford not only offersindustry-leading crash protection and crash avoidance systems, we also are
committed to developing new technologies such as MyKey that encourage safer driving behavior,”
said Sue Cischke, Ford group vice president of Sustainability, Environment and Safety Engineering.
“MyKey can help promote safer driving, particularly among teens, by encouraging safety belt use,
limiting speed and reducingdistractions.”
MyKey is appealing to parents of teen drivers, including 75 percent who like the speed-limiting
feature, 72 percent who like the more insistent safety-belt reminder, and 63 percent who like the
audio limiting feature, according to a Harris Interactive Survey conducted for Ford.
About 50 percent of those who would consider purchasing MyKey also said they would allow their
children touse the family vehicle more often if it were equipped with the new technology. The
added seat time can help teens build their driving skills in a more controlled setting, complementing
graduated licensing laws that give young drivers more driving freedom as they get older.
More than half of the parents surveyed worry that their teenagers are driving at unsafe speeds,
talking on hand-held cellphones or texting while driving, or are otherwise driving distracted. More
than a third of parents also are concerned that their teens do not always buckle their safety belts
when driving.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), teens are more likely
to take risks such as speeding – a contributing factor in 30 percent of all fatal crashes. Teens also are
lesslikely to wear safety belts than older drivers.
Teens surveyed by Harris said they are largely open to MyKey if it means they will have more
freedom to drive. Initially, 67 percent of teens polled said they wouldn’t want MyKey features.
However, if using MyKey would lead to greater driving privileges, only 36 percent would object to
the technology.
“We’ve upgraded an existing, proven technology– the SecuriLock® Passive Anti-Theft System –
with some simple software upgrades to develop a new unique feature that we believe will resonate
with customers,” said Graydon Reitz, director, Electrical and Electronic Systems Engineering, the
same team that developed SYNC in partnership with Microsoft. “We also developed MyKey’s
functions in such a way to quickly spread it across multiplevehicle lines, giving us the ability to go
mass market in the spirit of other Ford innovations such as safety belts, stability control and SYNC.”
Holding the key
The MyKey system allows the parent to program any key through the vehicle message center, which
updates the SecuriLock Passive Anti-Theft System. When the MyKey is inserted into the ignition,
the system reads the transponder chip in the...