Drive safe, win cash

Hawai‘i drivers can win $2,500 this month for driving safely.

In 2016, then-governor David Ige proclaimed August as “Drive Aloha Month,” and Hawai‘i firm DTRIC Insurance has sponsored road safety awareness programs ever since.

This year, DTRIC is once again holding a month-long contest to incentivize drivers to curb their bad habits behind the wheel: the Drive Aloha Safest Driver Challenge.

The challenge, now being held for the third year in a row, uses a phone app to track drivers’ behaviors and flag certain unsafe actions, which will be used to tabulate safe driving scores.

“Many drivers don’t know how they drive,” DTRIC Vice President Wenli Lin told Aloha State Daily. “For example, I didn’t know that I accelerate too fast. I never knew I did that until I used the app.”

Lin said the free app — DriveWell Go, developed by Cambridge Mobile Telematics — scores participants based on five bad habits: speeding, phone use, rapid acceleration, aggressive braking and hard cornering.

Each trip with DriveWell Go active will be scored, and users will be able to see a map of their route that highlights the location of each instance of unsafe driving. Lin said this will give drivers a clearer picture of their habits and where they can improve.

Lin assured ASD that the data collected by the app will not be sold or result in users’ insurance rates going up.

The contest is only open to drivers over the age of 18 with valid Hawai‘i licenses. While people can sign up throughout the month of August, they must drive at least 150 miles over 30 separate trips before the end of the month for their score to be counted.

“That’s so people actually take it seriously, and don’t just download the app and never drive anywhere and get a perfect score,” Lin said.

At the end of the month, the three participants with the best cumulative scores will win cash prizes: $2,500 for first place, $1,000 for second and $500 for third.

“We actually upped the prize this year because of this year’s fatality rates,” Lin said, adding that previous contests only awarded $1,000 to first place, and nothing below that.

According to the Honolulu Police Department, there have been 48 traffic fatalities on O‘ahu this year so far. By comparison, there were 51 fatalities in all of 2024.

The DriveWell Go app is available on the Apple App Store and Google Play. Users can register for the contest with the code 134617.

ASD reached out to HPD for comment.