DriveMyWay Reviews

This is a terrible app. Our individual overall scores make no sense as the trend can vary by 20 points from day to day for both my wife and me. Our driving is not that inconsistent! Also, when we are both in the car (which happens frequently) DriveMyWay will consistently show us both as drivers, so we have to constantly correct that. But the crazy thing is that DriveMyWay will give different results for each of us while we are sitting next to each other! We have identical iPhones so that is not the cause. I have contacted support multiple times sending screenshots of the trend variations and have only received excuses (feels like a pat on the head) without an explanation that actually makes sense.

While DriveMyWay promises lower premiums, is does so in a way that is totally frustrating. Although I am in the ‘trial period’, several problems with DriveMyWay give me pause.
1) DriveMyWay is supposed to ‘know’ when you are a passenger vs a driver. Every time I get in a car, DriveMyWay counts me as a driver. Although you can set yourself as a passenger later, it seems you can only do this for a short time afterward. Also is does not change your score when you do.
2) I have several instances of ‘phone use’ while driving. I never touch my phone when driving. I do, however use either a Bluetooth connection, or a hardwired connection for the built in navigation and music on my car’s screen. Navigation destinations are either always set before, or set by the passenger. Music is controlled as easy as changing the radio station. This absolutely should not count as phone use. Again, I never touch my phone in the car.
3) Over 90% of my trips (covering over 90% of miles driven) are 5 star rated. (At the beginning both I and my son had all 5 star trips.) Yet in both cases and going forward, our ‘score’ was not what I would consider good. There is no explanation as to how the score is calculated. This is also a problem, because if this score affects my premium, there should be absolute transparency.

At this rate I’m sure my list above will grow.

DriveMyWay is horribly. For example you look at your last trip to say I was the passenger. Then you swipe for the next trip and it no longer shows the date so you don’t know what you’re looking at.
The information it collects is not correct either. One of the ways to figure the discount is miles driven and time of day. We don’t drive much. One works from home the other part time. One a student who takes the bus. No one drives at night. But my son gets hit hard because he drives an old car but needs his phone for navigation. This car also only has liability coverage. Buy it appears this effects the rate way more than the other things included.
I hate it but with four drivers we need every discount we can muster.

DriveMyWay is not accurate at all. We have four drivers and it does not track properly. If two or more of us are in the vehicle it will track two or more as drivers at the same time. And it might give a 3 star for, let’s say hard braking, to driver 1 but a 5 star to driver 2 during the exact same car ride/drive. It’s insane to me that the company is using this to rate customers. The previous app was not perfect, but it was so much more accurate than DriveMyWay. The problem with four drivers in my home (two teens) we can’t afford to not use it as we NEED all the discounts we can get because insurance premium are ridiculous. I sure hope American Family either goes back to the previous app or seriously improves DriveMyWay over the next few weeks/months.

A good idea with terrible execution. Speed limits in DriveMyWay often do not match posted speed limits on the road. The suggestion from their tech support is to mark myself as a passenger for these trips, which requires constant editing of trips. Also requires editing for bike rides, public transport, travel not in your own car, or any time you’re actually a passenger in your own car or someone else’s. Dings you for “hard braking” any time you slow for a yellow to red light when you’re traveling at or under the speed limit. And the features for which you’re scored on each trip (speeding, phone use, hard braking) appear to be unrelated to the overall mystery score that actually determines your discount. Overall, a capricious, inaccurate, big brother app that I wish I didn’t have to use.

I have had issues with DriveMyWay since it launched. It dings me on things that are supposed to be good driving behaviors. For example, I had to use my phone the other day. So I found a safe place to pull over, put the car in park, and used for phone for about 1-2 minutes. Once I was done, I put my phone away and continued my trip. I got dinged for using my phone while driving, even though I had made the choice to pull over and park before doing so. I also just got an email saying my score is 10 points lower than DriveMyWay is saying that it is. On top of that, my insurance agent enrolled the wrong driver and said not to worry about it. An email I just got said that the score in DriveMyWay will determine rates for that driver moving forward. I’m uncomfortable with my score being used for someone else. DriveMyWay needs a serious rebuild.

DriveMyWay,although improved from previous app, misses the mark on what it calls “hard braking.” I keep getting dinged for this when I barely touch the break. For instance to disengage the cruise or normal breaking occurrences. Not too mention when getting cut off by a semi or braking for other drivers doing stupid maneuvers- one cannot avoid it. Just today I got only one star for hard braking because I needed to slow down for a stoplight that turned green on a highway that was 45 miles per hour. I would have had time to run the yellow light but instead slowed down to stop at the red light. The hard braking does not accurately represent your safety as a driver. This is the only thing I’m getting “dinged” on. I am in fact being a much better driver by braking in the events I am being dinged on. I believe American family uses this to lower your overall score so they can claim it justifies lowering your discount. My frustration is epic.

DriveMyWay is horrible. I’ve had to contact them six times in the last three days because they dinged me for speeding when their speed limit was wrong or they dinged me for distracted driving when I didn’t even touch my phone. And then when they respond, it’s the same automated message telling me what constitutes distracted driving and if the speed limit is wrong, just change the drive from driver to passenger. I would have thought more testing would have been done, but guess not. All American Family is looking for is how they can make their customer pay more for their insurance. I agree with some of the other viewers that DriveMyWay is skewed in the favor of American Family. DriveMyWay should be suspended until ALL the bugs are fixed. And developer, please don’t respond with another automated message thanking me for my feedback and telling me where I can look for more information!

I travel a lot out of the country and DriveMyWay not only drains my battery but also overheats my phone due to the need for constant background location. The only way it doesn’t damage my phone is if I completely uninstall when I leave and reinstall when I return. I tried just turning off the location and it harassed me with pop ups every five minutes. It only doesn’t register when you are finished driving until sometimes more than five minutes after I’ve turned my car off and left the vehicle- making the phone usage inaccurate

If you don’t use it for three days in a row it unenrolls you and sometimes every deactivated your account! I work from home and when I’m not traveling sometimes I don’t drive for a week at a time! I walk! I shouldn’t have to take a drive everyday to make sure DriveMyWay doesn’t stop working or take away my discount. Not driving should increase my discount!

So they score you on speeding hard braking, and distracted driving. but they also score you on when you drive how far you drive how much you drive. All that is fine, yet even though I have scores in the 90s for all three of those things and I rarely drive on highways or at night, my overall score is 61!!!!! Also, I’ve been informed at the end of my trial. The other two drivers in my household will get neutral scores that will factor in and will lower my score even more, even though I’m one of the safest drivers I know and generally stay in residential neighborhoods. I have no choice but to believe that DriveMyWay is a scam to get people to have to pay more on their car insurance. If I am at a 61, I can’t imagine what other people scores would be if they have to live or work in a downtown area, drive on highways, commute long distances to work, drive at night, or anything that would constitute actually using your vehicle.

ALSO, I feel that DriveMyWay encourages bad driving because the hard breaking is so sensitive that if I slow down too much for a quick yellow light it takes off of my score. Also, it drains my battery on my phone.

Our family have been using the this app app, which monitors phone use, speeding, and hard braking. Overall, I find DriveMyWay very beneficial for its phone use and speeding features. It helps us resist the temptation to speed or use our phones while driving,. It especially provides me peace of mind by ensuring my kids aren’t engaging in these risky behaviors. However, I have concerns about the hard braking feature. Despite my husband’s spotless 40+ year driving record without a single accident, he received a poor rating for hard braking. I feel that this feature is so sensitive that it almost tempts you to take risks to avoid triggering this metric. This suggests that the hard braking feature could use improvement. While DriveMyWay does make us feel safer overall, it seems it might not be suitable for our family. It’s disappointing because we value the safety benefits, but we are worried that my husband’s hard braking ratings could unfairly increase our rates despite his impeccable driving history.

As an annoyingly honest person I find DriveMyWay gives negative consequences in unavoidable circumstances where quick slowdowns are inevitable according to laws of traffic on highways, or for reacting to wildlife. Should I be penalized for hastily reducing my speed when surrounded by traffic traveling 65+ mph while approaching my driveway which is directly off of the 4 lane highway and does not have much of a deceleration lane? I was told in order for it not to count against me to say I was a passenger. Well, that does not seem like an appropriate allocation for the circumstance and therefore giving others who may not be quite as honest a way out. Also, it would skew the data. But perhaps the goal is to have people forget they are running DriveMyWay and therefore collect all the data, where in this case it doesn’t always appropriately assign the role of driver so again data is skewed.

Overall, it’s fun to see my scores and I probably spend way too much time critiquing my driving and having a silent, one-sided, competition with my husband.

If everyone drove this way there would certainly be fewer accidents
Only complaint I have on the program is “hard braking” can occur at traffic lights where the light changes at almost last second and you make decision to go or stop hard braking happens and should not carry a major effect on
rates
Speeding can occur simply by staying with the flow of traffic especially on interstate roads
I currently have a 71 rating on the 12 month cycle and 100 on the 2 week yet I received an email that says my over all rating is in the low 60?????? How does that compute?

I still like DriveMyWay. It does make me aware of my driving. The sensitivity of breaking is too sensitive. I find myself waiting and slowing later than I used to which puts me in closer proximity to other drivers than what I am comfortable with but that is the only way I can brake and not get notifications that I am stopping too fast. DriveMyWay is good. If you are going to have an app I find it challenging. My awareness of my speed and being aware of my part is improved using it. I think the breaking is a bit on the sensitive side because I really don’t break hard yet DriveMyWay signals that I do. The tracking is good though.

DriveMyWay is definitely better. They have been good about updating incorrect speed limit maps if you message them. It does still glitch and show me going 100mph when I’m going 60. App support says it is my phone, but since the corporate default answer is to blame someone else, it is hard to tell.

The best way to save money with this AmFam program is if you drive an unnamed perfect amount. For example, you can get 100% on all 3 visible metrics, but still average much lower overall. So don’t drive too much or too little, definitely don’t stop for improperly timed or marked stoplights, and have your phone secured because if it shifts around at all, you get dinged for a distraction.

That being said, I hope all insurance companies switch to this method. It will make people pay extra to drive aggressively which should encourage people to drive better. Then again, $5/gallon gas doesn’t seem to stop people from excessively speeding and flooring it in their pickup trucks and SUVs everywhere. So who knows?

DriveMyWay is user friendly and is helpful. I appreciate the new awareness that I have of my driving. I am also more motivated and challenged to improve my score. I gave four stars due to a couple glitches within DriveMyWay . For instance I was on the freeway traveling home at or below the speed limit. However DriveMyWay incorrectly generated a speeding event on two occasions. I have also experienced an incorrect phone usage event. I was advised to mark myself as a passanger.

The only one that I feel is questionable is the hard braking. One time I had the green light to go through an intersection and another driver pulled out to my right to turn into my lane. If I wouldn’t have braked hard I could have had a collision. Another time I had the green light again and a vehicle coming towards me again turned into my lane which I needed to brake for. Both of these were from the other drivers not obeying the rules. We’ve also had a time where I was driving to a game in Florence and didn’t notice that the car had synched with my wife’s phone on the way back home so she got dinged for using her phone and being distracted when she wasn’t even driving. I thought the GPS could tell if the phone was on the drivers or passengers side. This happened at least twice for her when I was the driver. We have now tried to check each time whose phone is being synched to the car. I just thought that once it was synched up at the beginning of a trip it would stay there when I’m in the drivers seat.

I like using DriveMyWay because it reminds me to be alert to how I’m driving. At first I was a little nervous about it but that quickly changed to comfort! I know that things happen and I can’t control how others drive. I try to drive defensively. The “hard breaking”is the one area I have the least control over. When you leave ample space between cars, you make way for aggressive drivers to cut in and out. That is often when hard breaking seems to occur. All in all, I am glad to have use of DriveMyWay and hope i can improve my auto insurance rates because if it!

It’s going great! Was on the old app for 2 years and had a 10% discount. With the new one I’m heading for a 20% discount. My current score is 81 😀with over 6000 miles. I considered myself a good driver that made those quick decisions and maneuvers on the road. After using DriveMyWay and actually paying attention to my driving, I realized I was taking small and unnecessary risks. Now I drive as smooth as silk.

I changed 3 things…started using a phone holder, follow 4 seconds behind other cars, and use cruise control to maintain my speed. My current streaks are 467 trips no phone use, 118 trips no speeding and 23 trips no hard brakes. I get about 1 hard brake a week, usually stopping for a yellow light or stopping at the bottom of a hill.

One aha I’ve had…by doing the speed limit I can hit the lights in town just right so I don’t have to stop. I do get passed by aggressive drivers but I always catch up to them at a light. Speeding really doesn’t save us time.

I am forced to spend more time thinking about safe driving. I do more navigation prep before getting in the car. I note that this program does not fit into the driving scene in large cities. The majority of traffic is moving at a higher speed that the posted numbers. My car moving at 5 mph above the limit is a hindrance to others in Chicago and Milwaukee. I am not safe in any lane. Even the far right lane is dangerous with others diving in last second trying to leave traffic. The ramp traffic is joining the local race in the merge area.