In July I wrote a post about my family’s scary experience with texting and driving. That post resonated with many people – texting and driving is a dangerous and foolish thing to do, and we all must be vigilant about not doing it ourselves and especially about teaching our young drivers not to attempt to do it, either.
“DriveScribe takes the very device that is distracting most teen drivers and turns it into something that not only coaches them but offers a path to rewards,” said Will England, CEO of Drive Power, the company that developed DriveScribe. “Research shows that teens respond to positive incentives. The DriveScribe platform is built on that premise. While the app limits distractions and monitors performance, it also guides and encourages teens to drive more safely by rewarding good driving. It’s a win-win: Parents get peace of mind and teens get rewarded when they drive well.”
I was contacted by Drivescribe to test out their smartphone app, which monitors and records the driving behavior of the user. Drivescribe is presented as a driving coach. After each trip, the app records the behavior of the driver on their website, and parents and teen drivers are able to see how successfully they followed the laws of the road and which unsafe behaviors they need to work on eliminating. For the free and basic plan, the user receives a report. If upgraded, the user can earn points towards gift cards for good driving behavior, and the parents of the teens can add cash to the rewards pot when they feel the driver has performed especially well. The cost of upgrading ranges from three to ten dollars per month, depending on how many points you would like to have available.
I tested out Drivescribe, and so did my daughter (she’s 22, so a little old for the parental monitoring). The app is easy to use, once installed – at the beginning of each trip you just press “start” and your phone records your driving behavior. Drivescribe also has the speed limit of the street you’re driving on in it’s store of information, and informs you when the speed limit changes via a voice notification – much like a GPS system tells you when to turn left or right. I made the mistake of having my activity texted to me, so when I made driving errors – both times it was for “hard braking” – the app texted me a notification of what I’d done. This texting would normally have come from the teen’s program to the parent.
I can see where this app would be very helpful for parents of new drivers. The most glaring problem that I see is that the teen must remember to start the trip monitor, which might be easy to forget for a lot of teens. Second, the texting of violations could make a parent of a young driver a little nuts…but it also offers a lot of opportunity for teaching your teens about safe driving. For example, one of my “hard braking” violations was when a young woman ran out to cross the street in the middle of the road where there was no crosswalk. A teen driver might not have been as vigilant about watching all that is going on around him/her on the road as I am, and this could open up a conversation with a teen about keeping aware of other’s errors while driving.
Here’s a screenshot of my driving report:
One feature of the app, when used with Android phones, is that it blocks all incoming contact while the car is in motion. I think this is fantastic, and I hope the app can soon do this for Iphones, too – so many teens use them that it would be a big help.
Too get Drivescribe for your teen, have them download the app to their smartphone.
“I wrote this blog post while participating in a campaign by
Drivescribe and received
payment for my participation. All opinions stated within are my own.”
Sharon, this is really fantastic. I had thought of checking the phone bill, which records incoming and outgoing texts, but then you need to know exactly the minutes when your teen was driving (can hardly fault them for sitting in the parking lot texting) this looks like a godsend…thanks.
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Gosh, I love this app idea and I can see how the schools could even use it when teaching driver’s education down the line as the app improves. Great post to do Sharon! Have a Happy and Safe Labor Day Weekend!
Your Fan,
Sue
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I can sort of see this when a teen is first learning to drive or driving alone after being newly-licensed. But I do worry about apps that encourage us to “spy” on our kids. Most teens don’t deserve that. At some point, we have to learn to trust them. On the other hand, if the app helps our kids to build that trust with us, then maybe.
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