FAQ
Navigation apps like Google maps or Waze, for example, and various music service apps with your playlists (Spotify, iHeart radio, etc.) will be seamlessly integrated into the KarChing app so you won’t have to flip back and forth between apps. Set these up ahead of time and launch it right before your drive, and you’re good to go.
Traditional insurance telematics rate the driver’s speed, hard braking and four other risky-driving behaviors and data parameters to create a standardized insurance telematics driving score. Each insurance company can then determine the threshold score value for their drivers, which essentially determines the financial factor on the premiums.
KarChing’s differentiator is our proprietary blended hybrid driving safety score, which takes into account the standardized telematics scoring methods, but KarChing’s main scoring emphasis is on keyboard and voice utilization metrics, which is a more accurate indicator of whether the driver is distracted by phone usage or staying focused on the road.
Your drive is scored after every trip and is updated in real-time on the KarChing app. Just check your app dashboard.
How often and when driving scores are sent to insurance companies is entirely dependent upon the individual insurance company. KarChing will send report requests based upon their business needs.
Every trip is awarded a score. The singular best way to improve your score is to stay off your smartphone while you are driving. Period.
Your driving behavior is being recorded and scored, but at this stage, the results don’t matter very much. When you get a license, you’ll have the opportunity to switch to the main KarChing app, which will judge your performance and distribute your allowance accordingly.
- Your speed. The app uses your phone’s location services. That means it knows what road you’re on. That means it knows the speed limit on the road you’re on. And since it keeps track of where you are and when, that means it knows how fast you’re going. (Statistically speaking, under normal road conditions, the optimal speed is exactly the speed limit.)
- Hard acceleration. Your phone has an accelerometer built into it. If you slam the accelerator down (don’t), it’ll record the event.
- Hard braking. Again, the accelerometer in the phone knows when you stomp on the brakes; it’ll record when you do.
- Hard turns. If you yank the steering wheel side to side at speed, the accelerometer will record this too.
- Phone usage. Don’t. If you use your phone actively while driving, it’ll be recorded. Your phone should be on, with KarChing DE running in the background, while sitting in your pocket, or purse, or backpack, or mounted on the dashboard. Hands off while on the roll!
Aside from making it easier to log all your practice drives, it’ll list the drives on your phone. If you click on a drive, you’ll see a map. Places on the map where you stomped the brakes too hard or whipped the wheel around to fast….or did anything else to make the accelerometer wake up and notice…will be marked with symbols on the map.
It can’t do magic like warn you of dangers on the road ahead, you are still responsible for learning how to drive. The app is just a tool to banish the pencil and paper logbook to history.
The KarChing DE app is free. The main KarChing app (once you have your license) does cost, though.
- The two apps will both record the drive. Details such as whether this is a daytime or night drive will be automatically recorded.
- The drives will have starting and stopping times and places recorded. The drives will be matched by the KarChing system and will be recorded as a “supervised drive” when they match together.
- You’ll be able to view all your recorded supervised drives (it will take half an hour or so for the latest drive to be recorded) at any time. Then you can print it as a PDF to take to the DMV.
When you and your supervisor and your 2 phones start a trip, the app will automatically start recording data as soon as you’re moving fast enough to be driving. You can leave your phone in your pocket or purse or anywhere in the car. As long as the KarChing DE app is running in the background (with location permission on) it does the rest.
Once you’ve downloaded it, all you do is turn it on and let it run in the background. You will need to give location permissions on your phone.
If you have an Android device, go to the Google Play Store and search for “karching”. If you have an iOS (Apple) device, go to the App Store and search for “karching”. You can install the KarChing Driver Education app just as you would install any other app. No tricks, no complexity.
A modern smartphone with location services and an accelerometer is all it takes. You’ll need iOS version 11 or higher for Apple, or for Android, version 8 or later.
Any student learning to drive and any people serving as ‘supervisor’. Supervisor is defined as a (in the car beside the new driver for all these trips).
In order to take your driving exam, the state wants to first see a record of your “practice” driving. They want a parent or aunt or uncle or older sibling … or somebody over 21, with at least a certain number of years of driving experience, beside you for all this practice. The traditional way to prove you have completed your driving hours was to document it with a paper a pencil. This was done on a form from the driver education manual.
KarChing uses an Application Programming Interface (API), or software intermediary, that allows our app to “talk” with the insurance company’s application and exchange telematics data.
This will vary from a few months to years, depending upon your insurance company’s data maintenance and record retention best practices.
If you are a passenger in a car, it does not negatively impact your driving score if you use your phone. But you’ll have to prove that you are indeed a passenger and not the driver.
- If the car is moving faster than 8 m.p.h., a screen will pop open and you will need to use your phone’s camera to take a selfie of you in any of the passenger seats while the car is in motion.
- The app algorithm will assess your passenger status and score the telematics parameters accordingly.