steersafe

Login page
Home page for you to start driving distraction-free, using Apple's Core Motion and Location APIs to track your
Store page, where you can complete quests and exchange coins for rewards with various potential partners
Leaderboard page to compare yourself to other drivers
Profile page, where you will find your stats as well as challenges to complete, and sign out button

Inspiration

Our inspiration for steersafe came from a desire to make a tangible impact, particularly in the dense urban areas where we live and commute daily as students. Car crashes, especially those caused by distracted driving, are a universal issue that us as college students relate to firsthand, often witnessing them happen on our campuses. Distracted driving leads to countless accidents, injuries, and fatalities each year. We wanted to create a solution that rewards those making an effort, all while promoting the concept of safer, smarter cities. Watch our hype video!

What It Does

steersafe is a mobile app that detects phone usage while driving, encouraging drivers to stay focused by rewarding distraction-free habits. Users earn coins for safe, uninterrupted driving, which can be redeemed for real-world rewards like gift cards, and other rewards as we begin to partner with brands such as Dunkin’ Donuts. The app also features a leaderboard system, fostering friendly competition among users to see who can be the safest driver on the road. It provides an engaging and fun gamified experience where safe driving habits become a fun challenge rather than a chore.

How We Built It

We used a combination of technologies we were completely unfamiliar with to build steersafe:

Swift + SwiftUI for the frontend, creating a modern, user-friendly interface for iPhones.
Firebase for backend infrastructure, including Firebase Authentication for secure user login and Firebase Realtime Database for real-time data storage which updates driving information with low latency.
Apple CoreMotion and CoreLocation APIs to accurately detect phone usage and track driving activity.
To detect phone usage, we leveraged Apple’s APIs, which grant access to the smartphone’s motion sensors. Through rigorous testing, trial and error, and ultimate teamwork, we found and fine tuned an algorithm that accurately detects phone usage via accelerometer data across 3 dimensions.
TomTom API to integrate map data and ensure seamless navigation support.
Figma for designing a clean, intuitive user interface focused on ease of use and aesthetics.

Challenges We Ran Into

One of the biggest challenges was the completely new language of Swift and realm of mobile development. Despite having the option to turn this into a website or change ideas, we decided as a team to face the challenge head-on and implement the best possible version of this solution. Furthermore, none of us had worked with Xcode or iOS development tools before, so the early stages of development were riddled with crashes and bugs.

As far as the main task within this app–detecting phone usage while driving–accomplishing this with efficiency and accuracy with zero external hardware proved to be extremely challenging. However, we quickly realized that picking the approach was only half of the task. After deciding to use the smartphone’s natively equipped motion sensors, we began extensively reading documentation to learn about navigating this previously explored realm of hardware.

Another key challenge was gamifying the driving experience in a way that was both engaging and rewarding. Finding the right balance between keeping drivers focused without interrupting their focus proved to be difficult, but ultimately, we are confident in our solution.

Accomplishments That We’re Proud Of

We’re extremely proud of not only successfully creating an app that detects phone usage while driving and turns safe driving into a rewarding experience, but also of learning so many new languages and frameworks in such a short time. Despite our inexperience with mobile development, we managed to integrate complex APIs like CoreMotion, CoreLocation, and Firebase to bring our vision to life.

Another major achievement was building something that we’re all truly passionate about. We believe steersafe has the potential to make a real impact on the community, helping to foster safer roads and encouraging drivers to adopt distraction-free habits that can save lives.

What We Learned

This experience has been an incredible learning journey for us. One of the biggest takeaways has been mastering mobile app development, particularly for iOS using Swift. We dove into key concepts like building declarative UI with SwiftUI, utilizing Apple APIs for motion and location tracking, and handling real-time data with Firebase. Beyond the technical side, we learned the importance of planning every step before jumping into development. From designing the user interface in Figma to figuring out how the frontend and backend would work together, having a solid blueprint kept us focused and ensured that what we wanted to build was both achievable and effective. This approach made our development process smoother and more efficient.

What’s Next for steersafe

We plan to introduce a friend system, allowing users to connect, compete, and motivate each other. We envision a social tab where users can see each other’s recently redeemed rewards, drives, and personal records (e.g. longest time driven with no distractions). We also aim to collaborate with insurance companies and businesses to further incentivize safe driving, saving money for both parties. We envision partnerships where users can earn insurance discounts, special offers, or even loyalty rewards to favorites such as Starbucks for maintaining safe driving habits. steersafe aims to continue evolving and contribute to the development of smart, safe cities.