You’re doing everything right. Driving carefully, following the speed limit, using your turn signals. But when you check your Drive Safe and Save app, there’s nothing there. No trips recorded, no data showing up, and worst of all, no discount building up on your insurance premium.
This happens to more people than you’d think. The app sits there on your phone, supposedly tracking your safe driving habits, but it’s just not doing its job. You start wondering if you’ll even get that insurance discount you signed up for. Let’s fix this frustrating problem so you can start earning the savings you deserve.
What’s Really Going On With Your Trip Recording
Drive Safe and Save is supposed to work quietly in the background. You drive, it records, and you get rewarded for being a safe driver. Simple enough. But sometimes the technology hits a snag, and your trips vanish into thin air instead of showing up in your app.
The system relies on your phone’s sensors and GPS to track your driving behavior. It monitors things like hard braking, rapid acceleration, speed, and the time of day you’re driving. Every trip gets analyzed and contributes to your overall safety score. This score directly impacts how much you save on your car insurance.
When trips stop recording, you’re essentially driving blind. The app can’t see what you’re doing behind the wheel, which means it can’t give you credit for your safe driving habits. Your discount potential stays stuck at zero while you rack up mile after mile of perfectly good driving data that nobody’s capturing.
The frustrating part is that you might not even notice right away. You could drive for days or weeks thinking everything’s working fine, only to open the app one day and realize nothing’s been recorded. By then, you’ve lost out on all that potential savings data.
Drive Safe and Save Not Recording Trips: Common Causes
Most trip recording failures boil down to a handful of technical hiccups. These issues range from simple permission problems to more complex connectivity troubles. Let’s look at what’s probably stopping your app from doing its job.
1. Location Services Aren’t Properly Enabled
Your phone needs to know where you are for the app to track your trips. Location services act like the eyes of the Drive Safe and Save app. Without them, it’s basically driving with a blindfold on.
Most people think they’ve turned location on, but there’s a catch. The app needs specific permission settings that go beyond just basic location access. It requires “Always” location permission, not just “While Using the App.” That’s because it needs to detect when you start driving, even when you’re not actively looking at your phone.
Sometimes a phone update resets these permissions without warning. You might have set everything up perfectly three months ago, but a recent iOS or Android update could have switched things back to default settings. This is one of those sneaky problems that appears out of nowhere and leaves you scratching your head.
2. Background App Refresh Is Disabled
Apps can’t just run whenever they feel like it on your phone. They need special permission to work in the background, and that’s what Background App Refresh controls. When this setting is off, your Drive Safe and Save app goes to sleep the moment you close it.
Think of it like asking someone to watch your house while you’re away, but then locking them outside. The app wants to monitor your driving, but your phone won’t let it stay active. Every time you put your phone away or switch to another app, the tracking stops cold.
3. Battery Optimization Settings Are Too Aggressive
Modern phones are obsessed with battery life. They’ll shut down background apps faster than you can say “low power mode” if they think it’ll squeeze out an extra hour of charge. Your phone sees Drive Safe and Save running constantly and decides it’s a battery hog that needs to be controlled.
Battery optimization features work differently on every phone brand. Samsung has it, Google has it, and Apple handles it their own way. Each one tries to be smart about which apps deserve to run in the background, but sometimes they’re a little too smart for their own good.
The problem gets worse when your battery drops below a certain percentage. Many phones automatically kick into aggressive power-saving modes that shut down non-essential apps. Your phone decides that tracking your driving isn’t essential, even though you definitely think it is.
4. The App Needs an Update
Software gets old fast. What worked perfectly last month might be buggy today, especially when your phone’s operating system keeps evolving. App developers constantly release updates to fix problems and keep up with phone changes.
An outdated version of Drive Safe and Save might not play nicely with your current phone software. Maybe there’s a known bug that the developers already fixed, but you’re still running the old version with the problem. These compatibility issues crop up all the time in mobile apps.
5. Poor or Inconsistent GPS Signal
GPS is finicky. It works great on open highways but struggles in parking garages, tunnels, and dense urban areas with tall buildings. Your app needs a steady GPS signal to figure out where you’re going and how fast you’re getting there.
If your GPS keeps dropping in and out, the app might decide it can’t reliably track your trip. Rather than record incomplete or inaccurate data, it just gives up and shows nothing. This is actually the app trying to protect you from bad data that could hurt your safety score, but it feels like a failure when you see blank trip logs.
Phone cases and accessories can make this worse. That thick protective case or magnetic phone mount might be interfering with your GPS antenna more than you realize. Metal and certain materials can block or weaken the GPS signal your phone receives.
Drive Safe and Save Not Recording Trips: DIY Fixes
Getting your trip recording back on track usually takes just a few minutes of tinkering with settings. These fixes work for most people, and you don’t need to be a tech expert to try them. Let’s get your app working again so you can start building up those insurance savings.
1. Check and Fix Your Location Permissions
Head into your phone’s settings and find the Drive Safe and Save app. Look for the location permission setting. You need to change it to “Always” or “Always Allow” depending on whether you have an iPhone or Android device.
On iPhone, go to Settings, scroll down to the Drive Safe and Save app, tap Location, and select “Always.” Make sure “Precise Location” is also turned on. On Android, the path is similar: Settings, Apps, Drive Safe and Save, Permissions, Location, then choose “Allow all the time.”
After changing this setting, restart your phone completely. This forces all the new permissions to take effect properly. Then take a short test drive around the block to see if trips start recording. Give it about 10 minutes of driving to make sure the app has enough time to detect and log the trip.
2. Enable Background App Refresh
Your phone needs explicit permission to let apps run when you’re not actively using them. For iPhone users, open Settings, tap General, then Background App Refresh, and make sure it’s turned on for Drive Safe and Save specifically. You can leave other apps off if you want to save battery, but this one needs to stay active.
Android users have a similar setting, though it might be called “Background data” or “Background usage” depending on your phone model. Find the Drive Safe and Save app in your app settings, look for these background options, and make sure they’re all enabled. Some Android phones also have a “Data saver” mode that restricts background activity, so double-check that Drive Safe and Save is exempt from those restrictions.
3. Disable Battery Optimization for the App
Battery optimization is helpful for most apps, but it’s the enemy of trip tracking. On iPhone, you don’t have as much control over this, but you can turn off Low Power Mode if it’s on. Go to Settings, Battery, and make sure Low Power Mode is switched off. You might also want to plug your phone in while driving if battery anxiety is a real concern for you.
Android gives you more control here. Go to Settings, Battery, Battery Optimization, then find Drive Safe and Save in the list. Change it from “Optimize” to “Don’t Optimize.” This tells your phone to leave the app alone and let it run freely in the background. Some phones call this “Unrestricted” battery usage instead.
Keep in mind that this might use a bit more battery, but the impact is usually minimal. The app isn’t constantly doing heavy processing, it’s just quietly monitoring sensors and GPS data. Most people don’t notice any significant battery drain from letting it run unrestricted.
4. Update the App to the Latest Version
Open your app store and search for Drive Safe and Save. If there’s an update available, install it right away. Developers fix bugs and improve performance with every update, and the solution to your problem might already be waiting in the latest version.
While you’re at it, make sure your phone’s operating system is also up to date. Sometimes the problem isn’t the app itself but rather an incompatibility between an old phone OS and the current app version. Updating both eliminates this variable.
After updating, log out of the app completely and then log back in. This refreshes your connection to the insurance company’s servers and can clear up any data sync issues that might be preventing trips from recording. It’s like giving the app a clean slate to start over.
5. Clear the App Cache and Data
Apps collect temporary data that sometimes gets corrupted. Clearing this out can fix all sorts of weird behavior. On Android, go to Settings, Apps, Drive Safe and Save, Storage, then tap “Clear Cache.” If that doesn’t work, you can also try “Clear Data,” but keep in mind this will log you out and reset any app preferences.
iPhone users don’t have a direct cache clearing option, so your best bet is to delete the app entirely and reinstall it fresh from the App Store. Before doing this, make sure you remember your login credentials. Any trips that were already uploaded to the server will still be there after you reinstall, so you won’t lose that historical data.
Give the app a clean start by logging in and going through the initial setup again. This often resolves mysterious glitches that built up over time as the app accumulated data and settings changes.
6. Contact State Farm Support
If none of these fixes work, something more complicated is going on. Maybe your account has an issue on the insurance company’s side, or there’s a technical problem specific to your phone model. State Farm’s support team has tools and information that can diagnose problems you can’t see from your end.
Call them or use the in-app support feature to report the issue. Have your policy number handy and be ready to describe what you’ve already tried. They might be able to reset your account, push a settings update, or identify if there’s a known issue affecting certain customers. Sometimes the problem isn’t on your end at all, and they need to fix something on their servers.
Wrapping Up
Trip recording problems are annoying, but they’re usually fixable with a few setting adjustments. Most of the time, it comes down to permissions and background activity settings that got changed without you realizing it. Your phone is trying to be helpful by managing battery and privacy, but it’s accidentally blocking the app from doing what you need it to do.
Start with the simple fixes first. Check your location and background app settings, make sure everything is updated, and give your phone a restart. These basic steps solve the problem for most people. If you’re still stuck after trying everything, reaching out to support is your best bet. Either way, you’ll be back to recording trips and earning your insurance discount soon enough.