Reviews for USAA DriveSafe

The program often stops running with no notification, particularly if your phone cleared memory caches. It has never worked on my wife's iPhone. Both issues cause us to be penalized when the software doesn't work as it should), looking like we aren't using it. 9/13 I emailed the developers and usaa directly, 2 different addresses, a month ago with no response. Lowering to one star.

Just doesn't work. When I first downloaded it, it worked in the sense that it assumed I was the driver of every vehicle I was in, including busses and trains. Then it randomly signed me out one day, and ever since it rejects my phone number on sign-in as not valid, despite it being perfectly valid to receive confirmation texts from the USAA site :)

Jan 2025: Drains battery in the background. 2 hours of reddit and Mario kart used 7% combined. At the same time this app used 34% when I wasn't even driving. 10 months later: Still drains battery. The only way to keep it from draining battery is to force stop every time after I drive. That also means I have to remember to start the app before I drive EVERY TIME. The amount I save in insurance is probably less than the cost for a new battery, sort of makes the whole program pointless

The app doesn't take into account for people pulling out infront of you and you have to brake harsh to avoid an accident even when going the speed limit or less. If you have hands-free operation of calling or playing music you will get docked for talking via wireless and docked for using a music app. It is very much true that if you go over speed bumps it will dock you under harsh breaking. If you have spotty cell service and were on the phone and switch to driving, you get docked.

I'm really curious about how exactly the points work. I can understand losing points for harsh-braking, crash detection, or holding the phone, but I have a hard time when I lose three points despite not having an incident show up. It's frustrating that they've gotten rid of Noblr, but there's no equivalent program to save on insurance. Of course they say there is, but it's only in 4 or 5 states. I really miss Noblr, that app felt more accurate to how I actually drive and was much more detailed.

It's works, but it wrongfully accounts for phone use at either the start when parked and you haven't moved. It just automatically starts a trip once connected to your vehicle. So if you have to plot a trip, you need to do it before you even enter your car. The whole point of use is so you can get discounted driving but if it incorrectly gives you trip incidents, it's not worth using.

At the end of each drive it'll say, "you used your phone x percent of this trip, consider ways to reduce your phone usage" but it gives you zero credit for actually doing anything other than declining a call. If you were to pull off into a parking lot and out your car in park to take the call, it would still record you as being on your phone that entire percentage of the drive. Same goes for grocery pickup etc. Orders. Very frustrating.

This app constantly runs in the background even when you're not driving. When it is running, it causes the phone to overheat and has now burnt out my battery to the point where I have to replace my phone. When it was working properly, it would mark hands-free phone calls (either via speaker or through headphones) as incidents and lower my score.

I'm frustrated with this app. It's inaccurate. I was using GPS Navigation and on three instances, when I was at a stop light, I slightly moved my phone to view my route and the app dinged me three times. Am I not allowed to view phone at a complete and safe stop? Also, I got dinged for a "harsh stop." But someone pulled out in front of me. Also, my family all participated in the app but apparently I didn't drive the required number of miles to be qualified for the discount.

This app is garbage. It is flat out inaccurate on everything. It reports every drive like I am in a high speed police chase with crashes every time and that I was "handling" my phone the whole time. So, I get tracked for no reason and it saves no money. I'm tired of all these insurance apps claiming to monitor "safe driving". Apparently I have a hard brake or near crash every day in the same tunnel when it just loses the signal for a second. Find somebody else.

I got this to potentially get a discount since I don't drive all that much (remote worker living in the burbs with close access to shopping/food), but after over 2 months of data collection (it has recorded every trip), it still says the minimum data hasn't been collected. What's the point of this whole exercise if my real results just aren't enough for the minimum? Beyond that, the app is burning battery at a crazy rate. The algorithms need adjustment for folks who really don't drive much.

This app sucks. (every) phone permission has to be enabled (all) the time. even when I'm sleeping. ( it is not any of USAA's business what the hell I'm doing when I'm not driving) if you have notifications turned on they constantly send you notifications "you had 0 minutes on the phone " I know I've had 0 minutes on the phone it's like they're trying to trick you into picking up the phone while you're driving. drains my phone battery in a half a day

After app set-up, I noticed an uptick in my battery usage. Once the "learning period" was over, the app was supposed to reset to a driving score of 100% (that was my understanding). Instead the app reset to a score much lower than I was already at (85% I believe). My training ended in July, and my score is now 88% in October. I am not sure why I went to 85%. It's important to add that not a single one of my trips has had a negative event since July. I'm very disappointed with the app.

Kinda cool app, and I appreciate the discount received from driving better, but it absolutely wrecks the battery life on my phone. Turning off the battery optimization for this app (no others have the permission to run in the background) and I go from a full charge to the 15% low battery alert in about 4-6 hours. Definitely needs to get fixed if they want more people to start using it.

This finicky app records all data, stays on in the background 24/7, draining my battery. I "FORCE STOP" the app when not driving. I also turn off all its "PERMISSION SETTINGS" when not in use. It does a great job informing you, yet most of the time, it changes scores so quickly. I went from 100 to 77, back to 99, for no reason. It might be another lead generator app. PROGRESSIVE SNAPSHOT was simple, as it hooked into your ODB and didn't ruin the life expectancy of your mobile device.

I just finished the trial, and didn't have any major issues with that, but as I drive normally without any trip events, my "discount" score goes down. No phone events, no harsh braking, no speeding (which I was told wasn't tracked anyway). No bad marks, but the score has decreased every time I have driven. This is an awful way to track safe driving.

Can't install new DriveSafe version. Error code 2000 over and over. Uninstalled and reinstalled 3 times..same error. Changes prior to this version put me from 100 down to 85. Constant harsh braking when I haven't even left my driveway or parking lot. Penalizing me for low mileage now too, which one would think is a good thing ..the less you drive, the less chance for an accident. I meet the min mileage but get dinged for not enough. Regardless, can't get new version to load.

Don't like the latest update. Navigation sucks. The Old way before this update, in terms of layout/navigation, was way better. Would like it more if they went back to a User Friendly layout. My battery levels have significantly dropped. And another thing, It only shows, about 14 days worth of trips & doesn't even include the map for the trips, which makes it difficult to track who did what trip. Plus, I wasn't able to update my trips for the previous 2 or so weeks,& I can't update them now.

My complaints for this app are many: egregious battery usage, whether I'm driving or not, cutting battery life in half; high number of "harsh breaking" false positives; unspecified data collection; not allowing battery saving mode; unreasonably intrusive data collection 24/7; and more. It's enough for me to stop using the app AND ABANDON USAA FOR GOOD. I just can't trust them when they put out such a lousy app.

I'd love a chance as a software engineer to work on this app. It is honestly garbage, they don't know how to appropriately slow down on sensor usage. My Pixel 9 Pro XL is drained in hours instead of the 1-2 days I got previously (59% battery utilization from just this app). I've confirmed this with others as well. the app records superfluous "incidents" while in my pocket. Only recently did they figure out not to record if you were a passenger. I'd give less of a score if I could.