Which smartphone app, rather than distracting drivers, can make them drive more safely?

DriveWell, an app created in 2010 by MIT professors Hari Balakrishnan and Sam Madden under the company name Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT), uses smartphone sensor data to identify road types, driving smoothness, speeding, phone distraction, cornering, acceleration and braking. After the phone is done collecting data, the driver is given a report card, which some insurance companies are using to promote safer driving.

Participating insurance companies include Discovery Insure of South Africa, Desjardins Insurance of Canada, Hellas Direct of Greece and Towers Watson, a global professional services company that partnered with CMT to make the app available globally.

Last year, more than 65,000 people downloaded and used the app as part of a competition in South Africa to promote safer driving. Participants earned points by driving safely and used those points to enter a lottery for weekly rewards and a chance to win a grand prize. Participants drove more safely, researchers found, as they reduced their unsafe speeding, hard braking, cornering and phone usage.

DriveWell is available in the Google Play and Apple App stores, but on an invite-only basis.