Setting up Safe Driving

Once it's on, Chickadee Locate notices when the driver's phone is in a moving car and records the drive: the route, how far and how long, average and top speed, hard braking and hard acceleration, and when the phone was unlocked or on a call while the car was moving. It never records who a call was with or what was on the screen.

The Safe Driving app shows each week at a glance, every trip on a map, and a weekly score. Drives go only to your own household's hub. The route is kept for 30 days; the trip summary stays.

Drives are recorded only where the household shares locations. An admin can check under Location → Settings: location sharing must be on, and the household must not be set to Places only, which promises that nobody's position is kept between safe zones.

1. In Apps → Marketplace, install Safe Driving.
2. Open Location → Settings and find Drive monitoring. Admins see it there; another adult in the household finds the same panel on the Share tab.
3. Switch it on for the driver. Monitoring is off for everyone until an adult turns it on, and the driver cannot turn it on or off themselves.
4. Optionally, in Safe Driving, set a speed limit for the driver. Time spent clearly over it is shown on each trip and counts against the weekly score.

1. Install Chickadee Locate and sign in as the driver.
2. Allow location Always on iPhone, or Allow all the time on Android. Drives are recorded in the background, with the phone in a pocket or locked.
3. Allow Motion & Fitness on iPhone, or Physical activity on Android. It's how Locate notices a drive starting. Without it, most drives are missed.
4. Allow notifications, so the phone can ask "Were you driving?" after each drive.
5. Open Locate. A card explains that drive monitoring is on and what it records. Tap OK; nothing is recorded until someone has.

The driver has a say too. In the hub, under Location → Share, How you appear on the map must be Live or Places and drives. Places and drives keeps them off the live map between safe zones while still recording drives. Places only and Off stop drives being recorded, and the adult's Drive monitoring panel then says "Not recording".

A trip appears a few minutes after the car stops: about three minutes on iPhone, up to about ten on Android. Very short moves, under two minutes or 400 metres, aren't recorded.

When a drive ends, the phone asks whether they were driving. In Safe Driving, a trip can be marked Driving, Passenger, or Not a drive, with an optional reason such as "Jordan drove". A passenger ride or a trip that wasn't a drive moves to Not driving and stops counting, but stays visible to adults with its reason. A trip nobody marks counts as driving.

An unlock while the car is stopped, such as at a light or on arrival, isn't listed. A phone left unlocked from the start of the drive, showing directions, isn't counted against anyone.

A driver sees their own trips. Adults in the household see the trips of the drivers who aren't adults. A teen doesn't see a brother's or sister's drives. In a shared space, only the space's stewards see other people's drives.

An adult can switch monitoring on for themselves. Their drives are then visible to nobody but them. Not to another adult, and not to an admin.

The weekly family summary includes a line on each driver's week for whoever may read those drives.

Safe Driving says so above the week when something looks wrong: the driver's own setting has stopped recording, their phone hasn't checked in for a few days, or no drive has arrived for two weeks. On the phone, Locate's main screen shows Drive monitoring: On and the time of the Last drive recorded.

1. Open Chickadee Locate on the driver's phone. That alone fixes most cases, because it restarts anything the phone stopped.
2. Check location is still Always / Allow all the time, and Motion & Fitness / Physical activity is still allowed.
3. On Android, check the Chickadee Locate is on notification is showing. If the phone has battery optimisation for apps, set Chickadee Locate to unrestricted.
4. On iPhone, don't swipe Locate away in the app switcher. iPhone stops background location for an app that has been swiped away until it's opened again.
5. After the phone restarts, unlock it once. Nothing runs before the first unlock.
6. Check the driver's map choice is Live or Places and drives, and that the household isn't set to Places only.