I can see a bunch of FReepers flipping open their Orwell Model Mark VI tracking device and entering little Johnies social security number.
"Well dear, he's on the corner of 6th and Broadway headed uptown at 47 mph in a blue sedan. Let's contact GM's On Star system and disable the ignition."
Explain why it is not rational - you just stated this without backing it up.
There are many potentially good reasons for it. A child that is a habitual liar is a prime reason for parents to use this device. A child that has been told not ot be in certain places or with certain people the parents don't want them to be around are others. A child that has had driving problems - speeding, for one - is another reason. Children that have shown they are too immature to be trusted through repeated past actions and statements are another.
And mind you, this is on the parent's vehicle. Maybe they want to know how their minor child is treating THEIR vehicle.
Because this is only a vehicle device, only kids with vehicles (and thus, are more mobile and are being entrusted with an expensive and potentially deadly heavy moving object) would even be tracked. That leaves a lot of kids where such a device as this wouldn't apply.
I think you're just against it because it's 'surveillance' and anything more about surveillance must be Big Brother. I'm not against parents knowing what their minor kids who they are legally responsible for are up to. I don't see this as the same thing as Big Brother tracking every move I make on public streets or forcing my car to have a tracker or implanting a chip in my arm.
As Freud put it, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."