High-Tech Back-Seat Driving

CHICAGO – A growing number of devices designed to help parents keep track of their teenagers driving habits and to cut down on teenage crash rates is giving new meaning to the cliché, “back seat driving.”

Through computers (search), parents can access information like the speed their child is traveling, what roads they're on, even whether they're using their turn signals.

But while parents like them for safety reasons, some teens consider this spying.

Click in the box near the top of the story to watch a report by FOX News' Jeff Goldblatt.

"I think my parents are, like, crazy and overprotective but that's nothing new," said 17-year-old driver Allison Wrubel, whose parents installed a tracking device (search) to her vehicle that can be monitored from their home computer.

Allison's parents even have the ability to turn off her daughter's ignition by remote.

“It'll continue to show me each place the car has been," said Allison’s mom, Laurel Wrubel.

The impact of tracking devices on teen crashes is unclear.

Car collisions (search) are the leading cause of death for 15- to 20-year-olds. And although this age group makes up just 7 percent of the nation's drivers, they're involved in 15 percent of fatal crashes.

Yet parents are being cautioned not to depend on high-tech devices to keep their teens inline. Auto consultants say that computers cannot replace parents when it comes to teaching the rules of the road.

“There is no device that can make your teen driver a safe driver, that takes time, that takes experience," said Mantill Williams of AAA. "It has been proven by science that the best way to improve a driver is for a driver to get practice. And for a driver to get practice under safe conditions."

Although tracking your teen this way can cost several thousand dollars, Laurel Wrubel considers it a small price for the comfort of keeping tabs on her daughter.

"I think it's one more indication to our child that her activities are something we continue to care about," she said.