NIAGARA FALLS — Parents have a new weapon to discourage their teenage children from sending or receiving text messages or e-mails while they are driving the family car.

A new company in Western New York called GoodForLYF has developed a program to reward motorists who avoid texting and e-mailing while driving. The program tracks the use of mobile devices whenever they are in a vehicle moving at more than 15 mph, and it calculates reward points based on safe use.

Reward points can be exchanged for a variety of benefits that GoodForLYF is negotiating with retail stores, insurance companies, wireless carriers and others, and its promoters said they expect to announce a national rewards program later this year and in time for the holiday season.

The company scheduled the first public presentation of its program during a briefing Wednesday in the Top of the Falls restaurant on Goat Island.

The first application of the new program has been developed for use with Apple iPhones and iPads, but its developers said it would be available soon for Android, Blackberry and Windows Mobile phones.

Future enhancements are intended to include automatic response messages to incoming texts and e-mails to let others know that the recipient is busy driving, warnings when user-set speed limits are exceeded and many others.

“We are very excited about our initial launch,” said Bret Blakely, a partner in GoodForLYF.

“In our discussions with young drivers, parents and law enforcement officials, it was clear that distracted driving is their single greatest concern,” Blakely said. “Our approach to this issue is unique — instead of attempting to prevent dangerous phone use, we are trying to encourage safe driving behaviors through positive reinforcement.”

The name of the company evolved from its underlying message—Love Your Family (LYF).

Mike Bongiovanni, another partner in the company, said that each time points are “deposited” in a user’s account, the user can visit a Web site, see what their balance is and share their own LYF experiences.

Elliott Winter, a third partner, said: “Local companies have offered products and services to reward users [of the program], and our hope is that by demonstrating a successful launch here in Western New York, we can quickly expand the program to include national and even international partners.”

GoodForLYF uses the phone’s internal GPS to automatically detect speed and determine whether the user is driving. Points are calculated for the total amount of time that the phone remains in the safe (idle) mode while the vehicle is in motion. The program does not disable the telephone functions, so the phone can be used in an emergency.

The company describes GoodForLYF as a “smartphone application to discourage distracted driving.”

rbaldwin@buffnews.comnull