Frequently asked questions

Salvus warns you about two things while you drive: a vehicle moving dangerously fast close to you right now, and a stretch of road where fatal crashes have happened before. Warnings arrive as a notification — you never have to touch your phone.

No. Salvus never shows police, speed cameras or checkpoints, and holds no data about them. It compares how fast vehicles are moving with the speed limit of the road they are on, and it knows where crashes have happened in the past. It is a road-safety warning, not a tool for avoiding enforcement.

Well above the speed limit. Salvus deliberately ignores minor speeding — an alert is reserved for vehicles moving far beyond the limit of the road they are on, roughly 20 to 30 km/h over, scaled to the road. That keeps warnings rare and meaningful: when your phone sounds, something genuinely dangerous is nearby, not someone drifting a few km/h over.

No. Once a session is running you can put the phone away and lock the screen. Warnings come through as notifications with sound — there is nothing to read or tap.

Partly, and that is deliberate. Live alerts about speeding vehicles need at least one other Salvus driver nearby. Crash black-spot warnings do not: the danger zones are bundled inside the app and work on their own from the first drive.

Black-spot warnings do — they run entirely on your device, with no connection needed. Live alerts about nearby speeding vehicles need a data connection, because they are delivered across the network the moment they happen.

No. Salvus never warns you about yourself and never reports you to anyone. If you are driving too fast, your device helps warn the drivers around you — anonymously — but you will never get an alert for it.

No one can identify you from an alert — it says only that a vehicle is moving too fast nearby, never who, and never which car. No name, email or plate number is attached to you: on our network you are an anonymous app ID. We keep only your latest position, and it is cleared within about 10 minutes of you stopping.

No. Salvus works from first launch with no sign-up, no email and no phone number. You can optionally link an Apple or Google account if you want your data to follow you to a new phone — that is the only reason to.

From inside the app, in Settings. Deleting turns you back into a brand-new anonymous user and permanently erases the data stored against you. The step-by-step instructions are on our account deletion page.

Salvus uses your phone's built-in background location service and sends a small position update every few seconds — but only while a driving session is running. There is no map to render, no video and no screen time. End the session and it stops completely.

Very little. Each update carries a position, a speed and a heading — not photos, video or map tiles — and nothing is sent at all when you are not in a session. Black-spot warnings use no data whatsoever, because the zones already live on your phone.

No, but do not force-close it. Salvus runs in the background with the screen locked and the phone in your pocket. Swiping it away from the app switcher ends the session, and the alerts stop with it.

Almost always a Focus or Do Not Disturb mode. On iPhone, Driving Focus can switch itself on when the phone connects to your car by Bluetooth or CarPlay, and while it is on, notifications are delivered silently to Notification Centre instead of appearing on screen. Salvus marks its warnings as time-sensitive, which is designed to come through anyway — if they still do not, open Settings › Notifications › Salvus and turn on Time Sensitive Notifications, or add Salvus to the allowed apps for your Driving Focus. On Android, check that Salvus is not blocked by Do Not Disturb and is exempt from battery optimisation.

iPhone and Android, free on both. You will need to allow notifications and background location — that is what lets a warning reach you with the screen off.

Not yet. Salvus is live in Bulgaria today and we open one country at a time as the network grows, so starting a session outside an active country is not possible for now. The built-in crash black-spots come from Bulgarian road-safety records.

Install it, allow notifications and location, and press Start before you drive. It takes under a minute, and our guide walks through every permission screen on iPhone and Android.

Yes — free and fully functional, with no ads. When a country gets busy, free sessions may briefly wait in a short queue so the network stays fast for everyone. An optional Pro subscription skips that queue, lets you set how often you're alerted and how often crash-zone warnings repeat, shows every alert you've sent and received on your own map, and helps keep Salvus running — €49.99/year or €6.49/month, with the first 7 days free. You never need it to be warned.