DriveTrend®

Figured I’d do my due diligence and leave a pretty honest review. This app works great, except for a few areas. First, it does a pretty decent job of tracking exactly what you’re doing on your drives. The map data isn’t entirely too accurate, despite leaving multiple reports on the app. For example, I-465 in Indianapolis switched from a 55 mph zone to a 65 mph zone about 6 months ago. It still states that it’s 55 mph and I get dinged on it about once every 30 seconds or so. It also says I-69 in Bloomington is a 55 mph zone. It never has been 55 mph and there’s no signs to indicate that it is 55 mph (it’s really 65 mph). Secondly, the Hard Braking detection is very wack. Every time I approach a green light that turns yellow (and I have to hit the brakes), it always dings me for at least three of four Hard Brake incidents. Third, the live speed isn’t always accurate. I live in a place where there’s always an officer camping on the side of the road. I know to never even touch the speed limit… however, it will say I go 50 in a 45 zone. Overall, the app is pretty solid and does a good job with giving you decent information about your driving habits. The flaws of the app really make it difficult to work with or even trust the information is accurate when giving you a driving score. 2 stars seems low, and 3 stars seems high - so I guess I’ll give them the benefit of it all so someone on the marketing team can be “happy.”

I first would like to acknowledge that I believe after using this app, I have become a safer driver. Knowing the app is tracking me, I stay to the speed limits and never touch my phone, as even changing a song or taking a call register as phone usage while driving. However, my main complaint, which I believe is a HUGE flaw in this app, is that when I am a passenger, if I do not remember right away to go into the app and select a drive and choose the ignore this trip option, it will automatically be locked down and assigned to me. This is insane!! You are actually being graded and tracked by the app automatically as a driver anytime you are in a moving vehicle! When I first had the app, I had the ability to confirm that a drive was me in the driver seat. Or I could ignore the trip if I was the rider. Something changed a couple months ago though, I assume through an update, and now ALL drives are automatically assigned as me being the driver. There is a very short window of time that you have to change those drives in the app to the ignore drive option. If you don’t do that within a couple days, the app assigns the drive to you. So for better or worse, I’m seeing all kinds of drives in here credited to me. Which I think is absolutely ridiculous and obviously highly inaccurate and inappropriate. Supposedly regardless of the scoring I will save at least 10% on my car insurance. But I despise the idea that my insurance company is collecting and assigning inaccurate information on me. To be honest, while I initially saw the app to be beneficial, this heavy handed automatic assignment is encouraging me to delete the app and not use it. As this confirms the fears I had before putting the app on my phone in the first place.

Just using the app interface gave much higher anxiety than my bill without the 10% discount. I would rather pay the full bill and never have to see this app again. And which genius marketer thought it was smart to associate pleasant safe driving with the bloody red color all over the app!! What failed marketing school have you been too, if you ever have been to one.