New App Makes Your iPhone A Backseat Driver

State Farm Insurance wants to make all of us better drivers. To do so, it has released the Driver Feedback app for the iPhone. Yes, for better or worse, the iPhone has officially become a backseat driver. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, three of the riskiest driving behaviors are hard acceleration, hard deceleration, and hard swerves. The Driver Feedback app analyzes a driver’s performance in these three areas and makes suggestions on how to be a better driver. Driver Feedback is an interesting app and one that will most likely lead to heated discussions between family members. For example, picture a father talking to his teenage driver about his poor ‘Driver Feedback’ score. Or, a spouse that believes they are a perfect driver, only to be told otherwise by the app. With much talk lately about the iPhone and its location tracking abilities, State Farm is quick to note the following on its website:

Note: State Farm does not collect the trip information. The data recorded by this app will not impact your insurance rates.

Strangely, the app doesn’t address sleeping drivers who swerve into the other lane, or those of us prone to talk on our iPhones while driving. Of course, who knows, maybe a future app update will come along that disables our car in those situations. Take a look at this video:

Key features of the new Driver Feedback app include:

• The ability to record trips and receive feedback on driving performance
• A map illustrating where potentially dangerous activities occurred
• The ability for drivers to compare their scores, or track the progress of an individual driver
• A trip completion notification allowing a driver to send a text or email to someone when they safely complete their trip
• Multi-trip average scores (up to five) to track progress

The free Driver Feedback app is available today in the App Store. What do you think? Leave your comments below.

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