Our new Safety Coach app can help you become a better and safer driver

The optional app will provide drivers with real-time driving insights and tips directly through the infotainment screen and the Volvo Cars mobile app. These tips are based on the driver’s behaviour in daily traffic, such as braking, acceleration and cornering.

The tips are guided by findings from our unrivalled, decades-worth of real-world safety knowledge and data. Each Volvo driver will receive their own dynamic and personal Safety Coach score, encouraging them to become an even better and safer driver.

“Our research shows that many accidents involve some form of surprise. What helps prevent that is predictability,” says Mikael Ljung Aust, driver behaviour expert at Volvo Cars. “Staying within expected speed ranges and avoiding abrupt manoeuvres makes your driving easier for others to anticipate and reduces the risk of a collision. Supporting safe driver behaviours is a key piece of the puzzle we need to solve to reach zero collisions, and tools like Safety Coach can help turn these insights into safer everyday habits.”

First up: Sweden and Norway

Starting in Sweden and Norway, drivers of most Volvo models from model year 2020 can soon download the app. In addition, customers in Sweden and Norway will soon be able to make use of a special usage-based offer from insurance firm Volvia if they choose to share their driving data. This opens up the potential for more rewards for safer driving.

Following the introduction in Sweden and Norway, the Safety Coach app is set to be introduced in the United States and other European markets. Insurance-related offers are also planned as part of this roll-out.

“Safety Coach helps drivers to better understand their behaviour behind the wheel, builds safer habits over time, and has the potential to reward them with personalised insurance benefits,” says Oscar Bertilsson Olsborg, our head of large cars, sales and financial services. “This offer brings together the best of two worlds: an app that can benefit overall traffic safety as well as customers’ household finances.”

The app is designed with privacy and transparency at its core, enabling drivers to manage their own data. Drivers can first choose to opt in to use Safety Coach and can subsequently choose to opt in again to have their data shared with affiliated insurance companies in return for usage-based insurance premiums.

The Safety Coach app is the result of a collaboration between Volvo Cars and Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT), the world’s largest telematics and AI company for safer mobility, using CMT’s algorithm to create each Safety Coach score.

The small print

• Volvo Cars Safety Coach is being rolled out to the following models with a Google-based infotainment system from model year 2020 and onwards: XC40, EX40, EC40, S60, V60, XC60, EX60, XC90, V90, EX90 and ES90. Timing of availability may vary depending on car model.