We don’t monitor our D’s whereabouts at college, but I was thinking it might be a good idea for us to use a tracker (with her permission) just for her three-hour drive home tomorrow with a friend. I want to be able to see where on the highway she is without constantly texting her and distracting her that way. I tried Life360 once and it was mediocre in terms of accuracy. Anyone have any other suggestions?
I would use the “tracker” of D promising to call when she leaves and if she stops anywhere.
If the friend is the passenger, can’t you just check in with her?
You could use the find my iphone feature. But I think you are over the top for a 3 hour drive.
Ask her to call you before she starts the journey. Then you know she’ll be home about 3 hours later. She or friend cam call from the road if they hit heavy traffic.
A tracker is overkill and helicopter parenting.
To think, we all grew up without both trackers, cell phones, and GPS and managed just fine. 
Is there a reason for extra caution? Is there supposed to be bad weather? Three hours doesn’t seem like an especially long trek for college students.
Also, she is driving Monday of Thanksgiving week…not Wednesdsy (Wednesday is the busiest driving day of the year).
Why don’t you agree that whomever isn’t driving will give you a call 1 1/2 hours into the trip.
I agree it’s over the top. If she will have a friend with her it’s easy enough for the friend to update you if there’s an issue. And I think asking her to let you know when she leaves is fine.
As an aside, my son drove about 8 hours to a camp the summer after HS graduation. I was a bit worried so I considered tracking his phone. Turns out I would have had to sign up for an additional charge on the phone billl. I decided I was too cheap for that.
I requested the number of the friend who was with him, just so I would have an additional contact. I asked him to text anytime he stopped. I got 2 or 3 texts each way and they retuned in one piece.
FWIW, we use Life360 in my immediate family. We all know it’s there, and we find it really helpful for checking things like “Hubs hasn’t left work yet, so I’ll wait another 15 mins before starting the burgers.”
I’m more of a free-ranger than a helicopter parent, and my opinion is that helicoptering with a GPS tracker has more to do with how it’s used than whether it’s used. Ours aren’t always on, but we turn it on for road trips and events where we’re not sure how long we’ll be there.
Another example - having lost a family member in a car accident before, sometimes I get anxious if the kid or the hubs are delayed. The tracker gives me instant peace of mind without having to interrupt whatever they’re are doing with a text or a call.
I travel solo fairly frequently, and hubs loves the vicarious aspect. Sometimes I’ll get a text that says “How long until Old Faithful goes off?” or “Ride the Jungle Boat cruise for me.” For us, there’s an added level of communication that bring us closer rather than feeling stalker-y or invasive.
As for accuracy, maybe there are regional differences? Ours seems accurate enough that it can pinpoint what part of the house I’m in, or even what parking space we’re in sometimes. We make Big Brother jokes about the accuracy, in fact.
Another bonus is that it’s very useful when you’ve left your phone somewhere. innocent whistle
We use WAZE - its a free iPhone (probably android too) app and my son invites us to follow him on his trips so we always know where he is. It work well - he can invite as many as he wants to track him and it also shows him where he is and what the traffic looks like and different WAZE users comment about the roads, etc.
Folks…the tracker tracks the phone. It can’t tell you if your kid has been in an accident. It just tells you where the phone is.
Well, yeah, but if the tracker is on the expected path and moving, you can be pretty sure there hasn’t been an accident.
watch out for the helicopter blades…
Another vote for Life360. The accuracy is not perfect, but in my experience it is within about 100 yards of being accurate. It is easy for either person to turn on or off as needed, so the “helicopter” aspect can only be used when both people agree. Its definitely nice to have when you are waiting to see someone at the end of a long road trip.
If I even remotely suggest to DS that we use the tracker, he would not be pleased.
I would not be so dumb to suggest this. But every family’s dynamic is different. (We have not heard from him for about 2 weeks. We do not even know what state he is in at this moment (we are only vaguely aware that he has likely been traveling to other states recently.) Hmmm…maybe he would not mind if we text him once before Thanksgiving – see where he will have his Thanksgiving dinner – not with us this year.)
I love WAZE for navigating but had no idea you could track someone else using it.
I agree it’s overkill for 3 hour trip. I just would ask my kid to let me know when he hit on the road. He would text if he was stuck in traffic for extended period of time.
A Ga Tech student was in the news recently because he didn’t return home from a party. His friends used his cell phone to track him down – the general vicinity – and after a three-day search in that area they found him unconscious and very injured. He is alive thanks to his cell phone. I actually don’t know if he was using one of those tracking apps you all are describing, or if they somehow got the last “ping” info from the phone company. But this guy was not even on a 3-hour road trip, and the ability to locate him by the phone saved his life.
I realize my generation did not have cell phones and I was driving all over the country. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t take advantage of the new technology available to us though, just because it didn’t exist in the past. Use tracking if it makes you feel better, and especially if he’s traveling in those areas that just got a ton of snow. Also, from my experience, travel times around Thanksgiving holiday can be double the usual time, so tracking without constantly having to call or text can give you peace of mind.
Just curious from those of you tracking your college kids whereabouts, at what age would you stop? Are you going to track them when they are commuting to work? When they are picking their own kids up from daycare?
Yup, stuff can happen but it can happen anytime and anywhere. I hope to never have a family member go missing but I’m not going to live my life in fear of it, tracking all my family members.
No one has said they are tracking the day-to-day activity of their college student. The topic is whether it is useful for tracking a 3-hour car trip. That being said, I’ve never used it to track my student, mostly because she did not install it and tap a button to turn it on.
A GPS tracker is a lot easier than sending a text whenever there is a traffic slowdown or something like stopping for gas, lunch, or a major accident blocking traffic. But some people might prefer to only send a text when something abnormal happens. Each family should use or not use whatever works for them.
I think, dear OP, that if this is what makes you nervous and you don’t usually helicopter parent, then you should find an app and track away, especially if you’re letting her know you are doing it, and ignore all those parents who are telling you it is too much oversight. There is no need to be a nervous wreck about your daughter for the three hours she is on the road, especially if she hasn’t done a lot of driving on freeways. We all love and worry in different ways. The “Find my iPhone” is a great choice, if she has an iPhone and you have an Apple device like a phone, computer, or iPad.