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3 Great Apps for Your Summer Road Trip

 

The following is a guest post from Jaime Netzer, editor of The Zebra’s Quoted blog.

Summer road trip season is officially upon us. This year, AAA estimated that 37.2 million Americans kicked off their Memorial Day weekend with a road trip. But traveling today doesn’t have to mean long games of license plate bingo and boredom, or hoping for the next town’s gas to be a bit cheaper—there are a slew of apps available to change all that. If you want to make your summer road trip as tech-savvy as it is fun, we’ve got three apps to download—stat.

 

Road Trip Driving Apps

 

Three Great Travel Apps

1. Waze
Quoted first wrote about Waze back in December, around holiday road trip time: “The community-driven app gathers complementary map data and traffic information from other users and uses it to estimate your best possible route. Waze users can report everything from accidents, traffic jams, speed and police traps, even the cheapest gas prices. As a result, you no longer have to rely solely on the red line—instead, you can lean on your fellow drivers.” Waze even provides alerts to locations of police along the way, so you can mind your speed when it counts most. And maybe the best news from Waze yet? Arnorld Schwarzenegger’s Terminator will soon command drivers in the app, timed with an upcoming film release. Think, “Turn left if you want to live.”

2. Inroute
Inroute is an intelligent route and road trip planner—it helps you find the best possible route based on “weather, elevation, curviness, daylight and places along the route.” Especially if you’re seeing your summer road trip as more of a journey through places rather than as direct-a-line-as-possible *to* a place, Inroute might be exactly what you need. Also, by knowing what to expect beforehand, you’ll feel both safer and better prepared for what lies ahead. Features include charts of sunrise and sunset times, the ability to search for gas, hotels, campgrounds, or places to eat close to a route, and the ability to easily reorder “waypoints”, either automatically, for the fastest route, or manually.

3. Songza
When you can’t handle yet another song on the Taylor Swift Pandora station, switch the tunes over to Songza and prepare to be delightfully surprised. You can search for music using time of day, allowing the app to play personal music concierge, or by mood or genre. The best part? Songza is completely free, and there are no advertisements, either. Found the perfect playlist? Save it and then share with your friends via Facebook, Twitter, or email. Songza has thousands of original playlists handmade by music experts, so you no longer have to play backseat DJ—there’s an app for that.

Note from Metromile: We also recommend using Metromile’s smart driving app! It gives important insights into your daily driving and car health. If you aren’t already a per-mile insurance customer you can sign up here to receive a free Metromile Tag*
*Note: The Metromile Tag is available in CA, WA, OR and IL and in cars built after 1996. Per-mile insurance customers still must use the Metromile Pulse, which plugs into the car’s OBD-II port.