Black boxes and global positioning systems are parents’s best friends when it comes to keep tabs on their teens whereabouts and behaviour while behind a wheel.

Omnitrack, designed as an anti-theft and car tracking system, allows parents to monitor on their computers where their children are driving, how fast they are going and the exact location of their vehicles — right down to a street address.

The “electronic fence” feature acts as a sort of leash. You determine the parameters (for example, speed limit) and if the driver exceeds them, Omnitrack notify you by phone, pager, email or fax.

The Drive Right CarChip by Davis Instruments monitors the vehicle’s performance under the hood and behind the wheel: speed, distances and hard accelerations and braking — even coolant temperature.

Similar to the “black box” flight data recorder used in aircraft, the RS-1000 Teen On-Board Computer, is a small black box that can be hidden under the front seat, but you’ve still got a connecting wire that would show. It monitors speed, use of seat belts and excessive G-force maneuvers caused by hard cornering, hard braking, erratic driving and “pedal-to-the-metal” throttle use.

If the driver exceeds the preset speed limits or drives aggressively, he/she will hear a brief audio tone. Should he/she ignores it, the alarm continues and becomes increasingly annoying until the driver responds.

Od course, such data collecting raises certain privacy issues. “I can foresee this becoming commonplace in divorce cases where one spouse wants to know where the other has been … or used by law enforcement,” notes David Sobel, counsel for an Electronic Privacy Information Center.

La Times (reg.required.)