Option to turn off step count (or add "Driving Mode") to avoid erroneous steps/floors

[MacWade]

I just got home yesterday from a driving 6 hours in my car and I checked my Fitbit. I was really suprised to see it had given me almost 8,000 steps, 3.24 miles, 134 floors, & way more calories thank I burned while I was sitting in my car.  I looked on the forum to see how to easily delete the steps, miles, floors, and calories so my data would be accurate.  The only way people are fixing it is by manually logging the activity "Automobile or light truck (not a semi) driving" and entering in the duration.  I think that is a cumbersome way to fix the issue everytime I drive because I have to make sure I write down what time I get into and out of my car so I know the start time and duration.  And how does it automatically know the calories burned when everyone burns calories when they are sedentary at different rates.

I think they should add a "Drive Mode" feature that when turned on it won't add steps, distance, floors, & will only add calories burned equal to you sitting in a chair.

You could access the "Drive Mode" either on your Fitbit One or on your phone app to turn it on/off.  If you have a Fitbit One you could press the button till the "Drive Mode" icon appears then hold the button down for 2 seconds to turn it on or off.

On the phone apps you would just go to your device under "Account" and there you could turn it on or off.

You could also have the option to give you an alert when you unlock the phone that reminds you that it is in "Drive Mode" so you don't forget to turn it off when you get to your destination.  It would also be cool if you could use Siri to turn it on by saying "Turn on Fitbit Drive Mode" or "Turn off Fitbit Drive Mode".

[NeilO91]

How do you know it is the Fitbit that is wrong?

[marky_marx]

Because it is counting thousands of steps while driving.....Verified by it
telling my I reached my daily goal while driving. One time I had been in
the car for 3 hours when it went off that I reached my daily goal.

[Ton]

@NeilO91 

Seriously? This is the 46th page on this thread and the 4th+ year since its inception and you ask that question? Whether the Withings is right or wrong, the Fitbit surely is not right. Trust me and the other dozens of posters here...

[Vega_Ska]

Needs an option for being less flexible in certain hours, like when i go to work i use the bus, from monday to saturday i go and come on bus same hours, why not tell the fitbit inspire HR to take that commute time into account so it will be less sensitive to  the bumps on the road and NOT count them as steps... i get too many steps counted becasuse of that...

[Jon_milner]

This is an absolute no-brainer - how can Fitbit positively reinforce inaccurate measurement?  Surely, on a point of principle, Fitbit should be trying to make the measurement as accurate as possible, rather than providing valueless information?

Personally, I want to disconnect steps whilst cycling, so that I can use my Fitbit to capture my cycling only (with HR etc.).  But because I can't disconnect the steps I have to leave the fitbit at home and use other devices (without HR) - again, how can this make any sense for anyone!?

Please, please, please add this as an option, and then we can choose how to use Fitbit's without having to leave them at home!

[Vincebryan]

Can you add “Driving” to the activity shortcuts on the exercise app on the watch? 

I know you can add it in manually afterwards using the app but it’s really laborious if I’ve been in and out of the car all day. Would be so much easier to just have to make a few taps when I got in the car.

[R2-D2]

This would be very useful in the event that the Fitbit is inaccurately counting items.

[Vega_Ska]

My fitbit Inspire HR seems to count steps while i go to work in a bus every day... Would be nice if i could tell the fitbit that im inside a bumpy bus ride, so it would go easy on the counting steps thing... Or maybe the app on the phone would not count them as much as regular steps, 'cause im going to or from work daily at the same time its like a 40minute commute and it counts as if i walked 40mins, which i did not walk... ( might work the same as going to sleep schedule, or maybe an activity i can preselect on the fitbit inspire HR )

[XAnonX]

My car will log thousands of steps driving so I have to log “driving” on my Fitbit. It’s pretty good about automatically having the right start time.

This is unnecessary, you should be able to auto-detect driving if you have it synced with your phone GPS. You could even go far as adding a mph set limit if you wanted. I don’t bike let alone at high speed so if I’m going 30mph let alone for distance I’m obviously driving. 

[tessdbear]

Come on! This was suggested 5 years ago!!! The “solutions” offered on these pages are not solutions, they are lazy, ugly workarounds. I expect more for the price. 

[FMF99]

Have you tried updating the tracker's firmware? Step overcounting on my Versa has reduced significantly.

[Bros3n]

I think I'll just switch brands. I bought this because I thought it was the
better brand. I should have researched more

[marky_marx]

OMG.....a competitor adds features after a product launches!!! Who even
knew that a fitness tracker company could do that.

https://support.withings.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360028816214-Feature-request-treadmill?page=1#...

[Infundibulum]

Amazing! I ended up in this thread to see if there was a simple fix for this (i.e a driving mode button), only to find this has been requested for nearly 5 years and nothing has been done? It seems to me like such a basic function why on Earth hasn't it been implemented? Is it because they don't want to admit that the activity tracking isn't very accurate so it implies their product is unreliable?

[akb8a]

Same problem with a moped!  One day it tracked it as riding a bike, so I removed 'biking' from being tracked.  Now it was thinking I was walking REALLY FAST.  How difficult is it to put a pause option in, or to delete chunks of data?

[tomjm]

Its really frustrating. I think we should start posting in Fitbit FB page.
At least the future fitbit customers should be aware of this issue.

[MM1772]

I recently returned from a vacation where my Fitbit Versa recorded bumpy roads, small boat rides, and taxis as steps. Though I was pleased to see daily counts of 20,000+ steps, I knew that wasn't correct. And because I didn't catch on to this until multiple false instances of step counting, I wasn't keeping track manually of the steps. 

Some have suggested a setting or button to pause step tracking. Though that might do the trick, I know it won't work for me. Currently I have my Fitbit set to start tracking activities automatically (for example, when I'm taking a walk). However, there are a couple of activities that require you to start and stop manually, like weight lifting and yoga, and I'm always forgetting to either start or stop those, so I know I'll have a problem with pausing manually when driving or using public transportation. I really hope there's some automatic solution someone can come up with.

Maybe there could be a list of parameters one could set? For example, the fastest I can walk is 3-3.5 mph. Because of knee problems, I don't run or ride a bike. If the Fitbit notices I'm going faster than that, I'm either driving or using some other form of non-walking. So maybe there could be  a screen where you note what activities you DON'T do (riding a bike, running) and what's the fastest you could walk. 

That's probably a poor example, but maybe it will help spur the creative juices in others.

[Phoebus]

I have a Charge 3 but I suspect other models would also relate to this.

I sometimes forget to turn off a tracked exercise (say, a walk) and get in my car to drive home.  It would be good if it could detect that moving at over 30kph is not part of my walk and terminate or pause the exercise!  

[Frogologue]

Thanks, I’ll check it out. Getting really tired of Fitbit’s
non-user-friendly interface for food entry too. Shame. Started well
enough...

[YojanaFitbit]

Hi @Phoebus! Great suggestion, thanks for sharing your feedback. I've moved it into a similar request.  A lot of users are asking for this option, I hope we receive updates soon.

[TroyFM]

The only thing that really needs to be changed is driving being considered an exercise. My fitbit tells me I work out 7 days a week because I drive every day. This skews so much information. Because of the inconsistencies from driving, fitbit's worldwide data is completely unreliable. For instance, Fitbit offers the 'Cardio Fitness Score' and shows you what your level of fitness is versus other's of your gender and age group. There are likely hundreds of people who don't log their driving which wildly skews the data used for these scores. I was in the very good category before I started logging my driving, and now that I'm regularly logging driving, I have fallen in to the low side of the 'average' category. Considering I exercise 4-5 times per week and am generally fitter than most of my peers, I find it hard to believe that I'm on the low end of the fitness scale (though I am 28 so, admittedly I could just be losing against a tide of 20-23 year olds)

How hard is it to solve this issue?

Is it that the team at Fitbit simply do not care about their customer's wants/needs?

Is your tech team too incompetent to update the firmware?

Do you consider it 'too difficult' or 'too much work for a non-lucrative quality of life improvement'?

The only answers from actual fitbit staff are to log the driving hours as driving which still doesn't fix the issue. It really feels like the question is being dodged, there has been no satisfactory answer or solution provided and this issue has been ongoing for five years!

Please add a driving activity that only monitors heart rate and does not count as an exercise for the day. By the looks of this thread, you've been losing customers over this issue. This is the highest voted feature suggestion and has 47 pages of comments all begging for this feature and nothing useful has been done about it for years.

Everything else about the Fitbit seems to work as intended and does a good job of it. Though every time someone asks me about my fitbit, I usually tell them it's pretty good and then immediately move on to how the driving mechanic messes with all of your data and hampers motivation. Basically, if you drive to work every day and don't exercise, you still come across as a fitness king in your fitbit data and it makes whatever exercise you have done seem worthless.

[LesterM]

This thread has been going for almost 4 years now, I think. Fitbit doesn’t care about their customers. There’s 47 pages to this thread, but still nothing. Save your money, return your watch and pick something else. There are far better watches out there. 

[GrumpyCyclist]

@TroyFM 100% what you said. I can't believe it's beyond the wit of someone working at Fitbit to write something like:

If (activity_type ="Driving") {

Log_Activity_As_Exercise=0;

}

or whatever descriptors they use. Surely something just to at least keep Driving not being listed as an exercise is a simple ask?

I'm sure they could write an auto recognition algorithm too that recognises driving compared to say Cycling, Walking, Swimming which to be honest are usually fairly accurate but one thing at a time. Let's not rush it. Hahahaha.

[Cksfreedom]

I have been looking for a way to take care of th er issues of loging steps as I drive.  I ride motorcycle.  I went on a full day drive. I had 38xxx steps.  Kind of hard to keep track of what your doing when you add these unrealalistic numbers.  One simple change would be a great help for alot of people.

[SunsetRunner]

I'm new to fitness trackers and I can't believe this is a problem!  Forget manual fixes, buttons etc.  Who can run at 50mph?  It has GPS it would be easy to profile the movement in a car or on a motorbike. The lack of this makes the steps/floors counters completely useless to me as I have done 5,000 steps and 60 floors by the time I get to work.

So Fitbit can't track steps.  Why did I buy this?