Distinct from a fleet telematics product — this one's for a parent whose son just passed his test, a daughter whose mother insists on driving down to Cornwall to see the grandchildren alone, a commuter who does the M6 every Thursday night. Crash detection, live ETA, get-out-the-way the rest of the time.
We use the phone's accelerometer + gyro + GPS. No dongles, no Bluetooth pairing with the car. Works in any vehicle including hire cars.
Your chosen contact sees a live pin + ETA. They can tap to see if the driver is on schedule, but they can't see speed or specific location pings — just an aggregate.
If we detect impact-class deceleration + airbag-pattern jolt, an automatic SOS fires to your contact + 999 with the location. No tap required — you may be unconscious.
No clever onboarding to dig through, no settings menu to find. Open the app, see one big button. Tap it. Get on with the drive. The whole UI is built around “your hands are on the wheel, not the phone”.
Accelerometer + gyro fusion identifies impact patterns. We don't fire SOS on potholes, hard braking or speed bumps — only on real impact signatures.
Your contact sees ETA + 'on route', not turn-by-turn telemetry. Auto-ends on arrival, no lingering surveillance.
On routes >45 min, we ping you if the steering pattern starts looking drowsy. Audible nudge to pull in for a coffee.
Pulled over somewhere that feels unsafe? Triple-tap the Apple Watch crown to live-share your location to your contact silently.
No installation, no Bluetooth pairing, no leaving anything behind. The whole app is on the phone you already brought.
On detected crash, both fire at the same time — your contact for fast human response, 999 for emergency services with location.
Unlike fleet telematics (Lightfoot, Geotab, Quartix) we use the phone the driver already brings — no OBD-II dongle, no installer, no Bluetooth pairing with the car's stereo. Works in their own car, a partner's car, a hire car, a Zipcar. The watch adds the silent safe-stop panic gesture.
No installer visit, no dongle, no Bluetooth pairing with the car. Works in any vehicle you happen to be in. Free uninstall from the phone takes everything with it.
Every Vygard Personal app is designed so the vast majority of alerts cost us nothing to send. SMS and WhatsApp — which we'd otherwise burn at 3-5p per message — kick in only as an emergency fallback. That's why the apps stay at £4.99/mo.
If your contact has any Vygard app installed, they get a push notification with the alert + a tap-to-call button. Instant, no SMS cost.
If they don't have a Vygard app, your phone's own Messages app opens with a pre-filled SOS text + a one-tap install link. iMessage and RCS deliver it for free.
If your contact can't be reached any other way — or it's a genuine unconscious SOS where you can't tap — Vygard sends an SMS via Twilio. Counted against your monthly allowance.
Parallel path to SMS for contacts who use WhatsApp as their primary messenger. Same counting, same allowance pot.
Sized for ~5 SOS events per month at 4 messages each. Most users never get close to the cap. If your allowance runs out mid-month, the app falls back to opening your phone's Messages composer instead of blocking the alert — your safety is never gated on a billing limit.
Top-ups are monthly add-ons in your account settings — cancel anytime, no contract.
Per-user SMS cost is the biggest variable expense in any consumer safety app. If we shipped "unlimited SMS" on a £4.99 sub, we'd have to choose between losing money on heavy users or making the cap dishonest. By being explicit upfront — push-first, native handoff, then metered SMS — we keep the sub price low for everyone, and the people who do need more (frequent travellers, large family groups) pay a fair top-up.
Full breakdown in the FAQFleet telematics products like Lightfoot or Geotab work great if you're a fleet manager. They're awful for an individual driver: invasive, dongle-based, billed by the truck. A parent who just wants to know their son got home safely from the night shift doesn't need a fleet contract — they need an app on his phone that says 'on the M6, ETA 23:14' and shuts up the rest of the time.
Crash detection catches high-G impact crashes reliably. Lower-impact bumps that nonetheless cause injury (low-speed lateral collisions, glass-shattering events without high G) may not trigger automatically — the driver should press SOS manually if able. Drowsiness detection from steering input is a behavioural signal, not a medical assessment — if you feel sleepy, pull over regardless of what the app says.
We'll email when Vygard Drive ships (Available now). No spam, one email, you're first in line.