033: Vicroads MyLearners App for Learner Drivers in Victoria (L-Plates)

Hey there YouTube! Today I’ve got something slightly different for you.I’m actually reviewing and talking you through the MyLearner’s app from VicRoads.

This app is a new release from VicRoads from December 2018, so it’s less than a month old, which allows you to replace the paper log book for your learner’s.

A bit of history: here in Victoria, Australia you have to have 120 hours of supervised driving on your learner’s and I believe 20 of those have to be nighttime driving hours.

Those hours have to be supervised by fully licensed driver in the passenger seat and previously you had to fill out a paper logbook with all of those hours and each Drive and it’s a slightly painful process!!

Well, VicRoads have now released an app that allows both the learner and the supervisor to have that app, possibly even on the same device (both Android and iOS) on their phone and it actually tracks the drive fully GPS tracked so that there’s no ifs, buts or maybes about whether the drive was done and then at the end of a drive that information is sent back to the supervisor who approves it and it’s recorded as a log. That way there’s no risk of losing the logbook or any of that sort of thing.

The app is called MyLearners. As you can see this is the iOS version. When you install it, at first you have to either log in or sign up. It does require a Vic Roads login, that allows them to authenticate you as a registered, licensed driver. You have to put in your license number and that sort of thing.

A few people have said in the reviews have said there have been some problems with that. I didn’t have a problem but I’m fairly tech savvy that’s why I’m here :), and I will step you through the process in just a sec.

Now I will note that there are some people in the reviews that have said (you’ll see it’s only got a review of 2.9 stars) that they are having trouble with the app crashing, not recording drives that sort of thing. It is brand new, I’m sure it will improve over time. We haven’t had any problems, but we’ve only done 32 minutes of driving so far so we will see.

From here I hit the sign up button, and it took me through to the VicRoads website to sign up for a My VicRoads account. It’s four steps through the process. The first one “Do have a Vic Roads account?” I selected “No”. It says “Do you have a Victorian driver’s license.” “Yes”. I then had to put my driver’s license number in and my address it then verifies my Name, Phone number, email address and a password so that I could log in. Then step three confirms all the details. (I can’t show them here) You have to go through and create all the security questions and answers, the usual sort of thing for an account of this type. The fourth step, it sends you an email so that you activate the account.

That’s the notification you get, that’s the email as it was inthe inbox on my iPhone. I simply click the “activate your account” button, it took me back through, said my account was activated and back in the app it showed me that, I have no drives to verify, I’m not coaching any learners and there’s been zero drives in the past 7 days, which makes sense.

Now, I’ll show you the learners version of this soon but for me, Beccy sent me an invite to say “Will you be a supervising driver for me?” and so I have, in my invites tab, in the learners section, a request from Beccy which I accepted and now she is a learner on my account. It now says I have one learner that I coach with zero drives.

It also has a bunch of tips and tricks that it shows. So, stage one tasks to practice with your learner, practice moving away from the curb, steering, braking smoothly and then I can click the arrow and there’s four or five different tips that it gives. They’re really handy.

Beccy has done a pre-learner’s driving course, so she’s already got about three and a half hours of experience, even before she got her learner’s. It was all done on private roads so it’s not out in traffic or anything like that.

When the learner logs in, this is what they see. Now this is my Rebecca, Beccy as we know her. It was her 16th birthday yesterday and she got her Learner’s Permit at 10 o’clock in the morning so she’s (at the time of this) done 22 minutes of driving. She then went to the supervisor’s tab, hit the plus button up in the top right corner and invited me to be a supervising driver for her, which is the thing that I accepted in the earlier visual.

This is where she is at now, and then when she clicks on the stopwatch down in the bottom middle, it asks her to start a drive. But she needs to select a supervisor first, so she clicks on that. She can choose from either Bernie or myself, she clicked on me, it now says I’m the supervising supervisor for this drive. Click “Start Drive” It then says to “put the phone away. It’s against the law to use your phone while driving” so we simply tap the ok button, and put the phone out of harm’s way.

We don’t necessarily hide it, like putting it down under the seat, is possibly not a good idea because it may interfere with GPS. Some of the people that have been having problems, I wonder if it’s possibly a problem with the GPS on the phone not being able to see the satellites at all.

So off we went on our drive. At the end of the drive, you hit the stop button and it shows the details. I was the supervisor, there were nine minutes of daylight driving, (this was after dropping a friend home from the station) and Beccy had to go through and select the traffic conditions, the weather conditions, types of roads, driving environment and then submit.

Once that’s submitted, it also gives you a little hint, “Basic car control in quiet areas first” This is great for first starting drivers.

Then on her phone it pops up that she has an unverified drive and she has two approved drives.

At this point on my notifications, I then got a notification that there was a drive that I had to approve, so I opened my phone. It shows this drive at 10:05 a.m. as an unverified drive. I tap on that and it says I can either reject or approve that particular Drive. I click the approve button. It’s now an approved drive and back on Beccy’s phone she now gets a notification that says the trip was approved and a comment. “Great work, you need to (supposed to say) relax on the speed changes” and gives the details there.

Beccy now has 31 minutes of daytime driving and a little hint about “are you ready” and then a summary down the bottom of the different types and times of driving that she’s done.

I personally think this is a wonderful app. There is a sort of conflict I guess between having a phone with you while you drive and that being a possible distraction but if it’s managed properly that shouldn’t be a problem. I really like it, kudos to VicRoads for trying something. I think you’ve got done a pretty good job of it. I can’t think of anything I would really change.

I’d love some feedback: if you hate it, love it, whatever! Again, this is the January 2019 version, hopefully, it will improve over time as they think of other things. Again, I’ve done one 9 minute drive using it. My wife’s done 22 minutes so we haven’t had any problems in that 31 minutes of driving. Nor either of us as a supervisor but we will see.

Anyway, thank you so much for watching.

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