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Car insurance driving apps combine the convenience of a smartphone app with car insurance. They’ve been designed to make the process of getting a quote and buying a policy simpler and quicker. There are all sorts of uses for them – all designed to make life that bit easier.

These apps make use of the features already available through your phone to make your experience quicker and smoother. You can get a quote and buy car insurance in minutes without even speaking to anyone on the phone. You can store all your insurance docs in one place. Your phone can become your black box device and save you money. And much more!

Let’s look at exactly how insurance driving apps work in a little more detail.

car emergency

Getting you the help you need in an emergency

A great feature of insurance driving apps is that they can use your phone’s existing features to improve your driving experience. This includes the less-than-ideal situations in life where your car breaks down or you end up rear-ending someone at a roundabout (hey – it happens!)

Some driving apps can detect when you’ve had an accident and help you get in contact with your insurer quickly. Known as accident detection, it can provide an additional level of reassurance that help might be on its way if you have an accident while driving alone. Apple released a feature similar to this in 2021 with the iPhone14. Also, if you have breakdown cover and you’ve broken down, you can often send your insurer your exact location to get you help quickly and efficiently. TIP: If you’ve not seen it, What 3 Words can be an amazingly useful way of pin-pointing your exact location.

These features could make your driving experience safer and give you the reassurance that you can get help quickly in an emergency.

Cutting down on life-admin and helping you get organised and save time

Let’s face it, the days of storing tons of important documents away in filing cabinets are long gone. Everything is digital now, and most things can be accessed online at the click of a few buttons.

And when you have a car insurance driving app, that extends to your insurance documents. If you are ever in a situation where you need to pull up your docs quickly on the go (maybe you’re pulled over by the long-arm of the law), you’ll no longer need to rifle through confirmation emails and find log-in details to log-on to clunky websites on your phone.

Instead, you could simply log-in to your car insurance app and pull up your documents in seconds. Whether you need to contact your insurer or simply check when your cover runs out, all the documents you need will be in the app.

But that’s not all. Temporary car insurance apps can save your personal details too. This makes it even easier and quicker to get a quote and buy cover when you need it.

Instant temporary car insurance on the go to help you in a pinch

Did you know that 77% of drivers admit to driving while feeling unwell? And while not all health issues make driving unsafe, there can be situations where drivers feel ill suddenly and must stop for their own safety and that of others.

Whether you’re experiencing a splitting headache or feel funny after eating that prawn cocktail at the pub, you may decide it’s best to pull over until you feel better. This could mean your journey is delayed.

That is, unless you’re driving with someone who has a driving licence too. If they’re willing to share the driving, they could take out a temporary car insurance policy and get behind the wheel while you recover in the passenger seat.

Instant car insurance with Zixty’s insurance driving app is designed to help you in a pinch. It takes just a few taps to arrange and can last anywhere between an hour to a few days. Insurance driving apps make it possible to deal with emergencies on the road in minutes significantly reducing any delays to your journey as a result.

A great, non-invasive solution for black-box policies

Car insurance apps are a great option for car insurance policies that need to know how you’re driving, when you’re driving, and how far you’re driving.

Many drivers opt for a telematics policy to lower their premiums. For instance, the average car insurance premium for someone aged between 20-24 without telematics car insurance is around £1,247.86. But if you choose telematics insurance, this can go down to £1,115.23. That’s around £130 in potential savings per year!

It wasn’t too long ago when getting a black box policy invariably meant having to wait for a little black box device to arrive in the post, or you actually had to wait for an engineer to install the thing. Some of the devices simply slid into your OBD port, of course. That is, if you could find it to begin with.

But car insurance driving apps could soon replace black boxes altogether. That’s because they use your phone’s existing features, like GPS and built-in accelerometers, to collect similar data about your driving. But, they are far less invasive as they don’t need to be attached to your car. This means that changing your car is an absolute breeze. It also means no waiting around, and one less thing to be manufactured and disposed of.

And although they haven’t replaced the traditional black box yet, some insurers are already successfully using them as part of reward schemes and telematics policies to encourage and reward safe driving.

Plantation of trees

Zixty’s car insurance app: Planting trees while driving

Insurance driving apps can be great for monitoring your driving, helping you out in an emergency, replacing black box policies, or even just arranging an insurance policy on the go. But, there’s all sorts of other uses for them.

Zixty, for instance, isn’t a black box policy. That being said, if you enable our free Zixty Miles add-on, we’ll collect some data about your driving habits. But we will only use this data to estimate your EcoScore.

EcoWha-?! … we hear you asking. Your EcoScore just tells you how eco-friendly your driving is. Your driving habits affect the impact you and your car have on the planet when you’re on the road. Driving carefully generally means having less of a negative impact.

We look at things like your cornering, acceleration, speed, and braking to determine your EcoScore which can range between 1-10. If you score on the lower end, don’t fret! We’ll give you plenty of tips to make you a more eco-conscious driver.

But, if you score on the higher end, you might even be a carbon-negative driver. That’s because we offset your journeys up to 100 miles a day while you’re a customer with us. Yup, even if you’re one of those smug EV drivers. Just kidding, we love you. Even if you drive a Tesla.

We calculate the offset amount based on a median score between 4-6. So if you score above a 6, you’re technically carbon-negative.

And that’s just another beautiful way insurance driving apps work. They can actually help make the planet a slightly better place. And who doesn’t want that, right?

An overview of car insurance apps

Car insurance apps are a great way to save on car insurance premiums through improved driving performance and safety. The app can be used as an alternative to traditional telematics devices and used to monitor your driving in real-time.

Some apps also offer immediate temporary car insurance when needed. Apps like Zixty also offer additional features such as Zixty Miles – which helps users become more environmentally conscious when they drive, and carbon offsets their driving.