AutoCoach is the first app of its kind, and it's directed specifically at parents of teen
drivers rather than the teens themselves.
It's a driver's ed app that was created by our certified driver rehabilitation specialist
on site here at Shepherd Center.
There's an entire curriculum that goes through the very basics of stop signs, driving around
the block, driving around big trucks and highway merging.
Once you've got the app up, and you've done your on-boarding and entered all your driver
information, the first thing you're presented with is the app dashboard.
This is the landing home screen for the user, it shows how many hours you've driven for
that driver, and what lessons are next for the driver.
As you notice on the dashboard in the screenshot, it's got the name 'Samantha' at the top.
That's so we can have multiple drivers.
So if you have twins, or closely spaced teenagers, and you're teaching multiple drivers at the
same time, you're going to have different logs for different drivers.
We log hours, conditions that they drive under, whether it's day or night, and the miles driven.
All of that information is saved in the app, and also saved to the cloud, so that Shepherd
Center can anonymously collect that data and provide evidence-based information that the
app is having an impact on teen injuries.
At the bottom of the dashboard, you seen there are the lessons.
When you get into the lessons, you're starting out very simply, how to start the car, basic
safety features of the vehicle.
The lessons advance in complexity as the driver learns to drive.
Ideally the driver's parent would do a lesson with the driver, and then go out and drive.
And maybe the next day do another lesson, and then go out and drive.
To start to drive, the parent hits the drive button, and puts the phone down.
At several places in the app, we express the importance of putting the phone down, and
being that example, and also being very involved in how your student is driving.
While that drive button is hit, the app is tracking how fast the car is going, where
it's going, and miles, and at the end of the drive, then tracks the condition of the drive.
So once they've finished the drive, the parent says okay, we're done, we've finished this
drive, here's some stats about it, your average speed, your top speed, the weather conditions,
and the parent can say 'well, you did good that time, you didn't do so good that time,
you're kind of in the middle.'
That is the log, and the log will be reported, and when you're done with the driving, you'll
have a PDF of all the logs that you can print out and take to DDS and say these are all
the drive times that this student has driven.
The lesson content that is in the app is broken down into nice, bite sized chunks of information
that the parent can walk through with their student.
And this includes text as well as videos, images, animated gifs, different content like
that.
All the content is what the certified driving professionals have produced and is entered
into the system.
One interesting feature of the system is that content can be changed whenever Shepherd Center
wants to add additional content or change the content, so it gives us the ability to
adapt it for new rules, things that we're learning about how students are driving.
It also can be adapted so that different states can have different content.
So if in Florida, you have one set of content, then in Alaska, you have a different set of
content, like how to avoid hitting that moose in the highway.
So it's very flexible as far as what information we're providing to the student.
So hopefully you've gotten a little flavor of some of the features of the app and had
a couple of minutes to play around with it.
We encourage you to continue to do that and recommend it to your friends as well, any
parents of teen drivers or new drivers.
Just to summarize, this app we're hoping will empower parents to be more confident in teaching
their teens to drive safely, and we want to give a tool to parents that they can use to
meet state requirements for time in the car.