Safety Apps for Teen Drivers

When you’re the parent of a teen who’s preparing to get behind the wheel, it can be nerve-wracking, to say the least. You probably hear every day about teen drivers who get into accidents because of factors like distracted driving and inexperience.

As a parent, you want your child to become independent and go through life’s milestones, but you also want to keep them safe and protected.

While balancing both objectives is tough, there are some apps and technology tools that are making it a bit easier.

The following are some of the best driving safety apps for teens and their parents.

RoadReady

The RoadReady app is free, and it can be used to track a teen’s driving experience and to help them remember safety tips.

Some of the features of this app include:

  • Tracks how much time a teen spends driving supervised
  • Helps teens learn how to drive safely
  • Tracks driving conditions
  • You can identify areas of improvement
  • Parents can track their teen’s driving progress

This app also provides a quick summary of all total supervised driving time to date and breaks it down into more specific categories, such as how many night driving hours a teen gets.

iOnRoad Augment Driving Pro

With this unique app, you can improve your driving in real-time with the use of smartphones. The app uses the native camera on a smartphone as well as sensors and GPS to detect when there are vehicles in front of what’s described as the “host” vehicle.

It will alert drivers when they’re in danger, and it has a Visual Radar to show objects in front of drivers in real-time and it then calculates the driver’s current speed with native sensors.

As a vehicle approaches danger, the app provides an audio-visual warning to alert of the potential for a collision, and this lets the driver brake in time.

Other features of this innovative app include:

  • Lane departure warnings
  • Headway monitoring warning
  • Speed sign detection
  • Ultimate car locator feature to help you find your car in a parking space

Hum By Version

The Hum by Verizon app is a connected car system, and it now includes Google Assistant as well. Features of Hum include:

  • Google Assistant lets you check your fuel status, get maintenance reminds and get answers to questions you may have from Google
  • With the Vehicle Diagnostics feature, you can check out the health of your car and detect issues before you get behind the wheel
  • Mechanics Hotline
  • Crash response automatically alerts emergency services to send help if an accident is detected
  • Pinpoint 24/7 roadside assistance
  • Stolen vehicle assistance
  • Speed and boundary alerts that notify you if your car goes above a set speed limit or crosses certain boundaries
  • Safety Score that gives you a safety rating based on factors like acceleration, braking, speed, and phone use while driving
  • You can track driving history and vehicle location
  • Navigation assistance
  • Location sharing

Life360

The Lif360 app has a number of safe driving features that parents will appreciate.

One of the main features of the app is Crash Detection, which is automated, and it sends alerts to the people set up as a driver’s emergency contacts. If you have a Driver Protect membership it will also send an ambulance to the driver’s location automatically.

The app includes roadside assistance, as well as something called Driver Report.

With Driver Report as a parent, you can see a comprehensive report on how your teen is behaving behind the wheel including phone use, speeding, aggressive driving, and hard braking.

MamaBear

The MamaBear app is great for any parent who wants peace of mind, and while it can be useful in terms of driving safety, it has other uses as well.

The MamaBear app was launched in 2012 and since then has been named as one of the most promising startups by the likes of CNBC.

Features of the app include:

  • There is a MamaBear Family Map that will show you where everyone in your family is at any given time, and you can create alerts for location activity. For example, you can set it up so that you receive an alert when they arrive or leave home or school.
  • Features of MamaBear let you monitor your kid’s social media in one place.
  • You can set up the app to let you know when your child is speeding whether they’re behind the wheel or they’re riding with a friend.

While having your teen learn to drive isn’t likely to ever be entirely without stress, technology does make it a bit more manageable for parents.