Travelers IntelliDrive‪®‬ 4+

I must admit I was not looking forward to being judged by an app , but intellidrive has changed my perspective ! It is amazing how much difference it makes to be aware of the desire to be distracted by our phones . Multitasking while driving is risky business and this has created an awareness of the many opportunities to reduce risk while driving on many levels . Being a competitive sort I strive for optimum levels of improvement when challenged . This has created an upward spiral of good habits we often let slip under pressure . So glad I will have created many good habits that will continue after the app has run its 3 months duration …. Conveniently how long it takes for a habit to form … Intellidrive is aptly named , and can not only improve your skills and help you with time management it may just save your life and the lives of others ! Kudos for the development

Let me preface this by saying that I really did try to make this work for me and my driving patterns. I’m also not a young kid who likes to drive hard and fast. But this app is not great at improving driving performance. Not only do you get dinged for driving during normal rush hour times, you get dinged for accelerating to pass, accelerating to merge in busy traffic, braking during an emergent stop, and accelerating too fast when you actually didn’t accelerate too fast at all. Driving this cautiously can be hazardous in busy areas (I live near Seattle) where staying with the flow of traffic is beneficial and going too slow can be a detriment. I have even received negative marks for hard acceleration when nowhere on the individual drives does it say that I accelerated too hard. If you’re counting on this app to lower your insurance premium then beware. You can’t drive during normal business hours without a negative event, you can’t brake if you’re cut off because cause you’ve been driving too slow (because you also can’t speed even if everyone else around you is speeding) without an event, and you’ll get negative events without your app showing you where it was. But if you live somewhere where you can laze around town, then go for it. It’s perfectly suited for that.

I cannot believe that insurance companies are using apps like this to determine if you are a safe driver. It basically records 5 things and uses these to determine if you are a good driver. 1. Accelerated. It tries to determine if you accelerate too fast. If you accelerate to fast to get on a highway you get dinged 2. Breaking. If you break too hard. Like to avoid an accident you get dinged. 3. Distraction. If your passenger uses your phone you get dinged. Or if you are parked for a short time to pick up someone from say school and you text them. You get dinged. 4. High speed. It uses what is reported as the speed to determine if you are speeding. If your town doesn’t update that they increased the speed you get dinged. 5 time of day. If you drive to go to work you will get dinged every time for this. It doesn’t matter if you do not encounter any traffic. It is all based on the time. But wait. If you happened to have an event. You can change the status to say you are a passenger. So in essence you can lie about your driving if you have a bad trip. None of these apps actually determine if you are a good driver. Do you run red lights? Do you wear your seatbelt? Do you ride the car in front of you number? Do you swerve in and out of lanes? Most cars nowadays have these types of sensors that these companies can use to determine your driving patterns way better than a phone app that truly doesn’t work.