USAA DriveSafe 12+

I still get a discount on my policy but I have to frequently go into the app to manually change the settings to state that I was not a driver during certain trips. If I use my phone while being in an Uber I get dinged for that. But the most surprising thing is that I get dinged for using my phone while flying a plane. I fly single engine small aircraft and the app interprets that as drives. It’s fun to watch the tracker to see where I was flying, but it’s quite surprising that the app thinks I’m driving over fields at 150mph lol. It’s a quick fix to adjust the trip as “not a drive” but sometimes I forget to do so and I’m worried that it would count against me for my auto policy discount. Overall not a bad concept or app, but there are certain instances where I clearly was not driving and the app continues to think I am. I used to work as a paramedic, and I can also see issues for people who MUST use their phones will driving for work. Such as police or EMS. For jobs like that, of course you are going to have some harsh braking or acceleration. It would be nice to see a “work mode” for first responders so how they drive while on the job doesn’t affect their personal auto insurance.

Overall, the app is great with a few significant issues. Other than harsh braking, phone handling, and phone use, the score is arbitrary to the driver as there is no apparent or disclosed reasons for point deductions. The algorithm is not provided. For example, if I take a short drive at or just under the speed limit, take turns at moderate normal safe speed, and drive otherwise perfectly, don’t touch my phone, etc the app will deduct one or two points for undisclosed reasons, so there is no way for a driver to improve without reasonable feedback. Often, when I drive to get gas or stop to drop off something or pull over to
make a call in a parking lot (engine off, Apple ios driver focus off), the app counts going to and returning from the gas station or parking lot as a single drive even though I was stopped for about 5 minutes with the engine off - just using my phone attached wallet seems to trigger point deductions when stopped. After almost two months of driving, I’m still waiting for a discount, again without specific feedback of when the discount is awarded (how many miles, hours, days, etc). As a result, the app is frustrating due to lack of accurate scoring and limited feedback. I wrote the review hopeful that USAA will pay attention and fix the issues. It’s a great app, just needs maturity and more disclosure and feedback regarding scoring.

Update after training: Have to keep changing settings to reflect me being the driver. It's not recording all trips. But now even after finishing the training portion come to find out YOU DON'T EVEN GET THE DISCOUNT IF YOU DRIVE UNDER 400 MILES DURING THE 20 DAYS??!! SO THAT'S SCORED AGAINST YOU😤 I had no marks perfect driving but they scored against me I got 94 out of 100 🧐I never use my phone when I'm driving I'm a careful driver but it was scored against me for not driving over something like 390 miles so you have to at least get almost 400 miles to qualify for the discount in 20 days that's a scam😢I thought that USAA was better than the others apparently not🥺
(First impression:The first few days I had the app it was working fine it recorded when I left the house and when I returned it recorded just fine and then the other day it stopped working it didn't record when I left the house it only recorded my trip back and I thought well that's odd and I tried to see if there was a setting or something I know in advertently turned off or done some thing I couldn't find anything it's pretty straightforward and simple but it seems that maybe it's been hacked or something it's really odd it's doing it again it's not recording when I leave the house only on my return trip and when I open the app it starts flashing and glitching a whole bunch so something definitely wrong with it and I hope this doesn't affect my rating because