"The Carpool Platform is operated by Clara Rides, Inc., not Lyft, Inc. Clara Rides, Inc. is not a Transportation Network Company or a transportation service. Clara Rides and Lyft do not conduct criminal background checks on Carpool Drivers, perform vehicle inspections on vehicles used for Carpool Rides, or provide insurance for Carpool Rides."
And guess what, nobody checks drivers' backgrounds.
Granted state of Virginia already has vehicle inspections (mandatory every year) so maybe the answer is to just have those in each state.
But yeah the system works fine. An acquintance working for the DHS hasn't driven herself to work in 15 years because she has been slugging.
Indeed. I'd also add "Getting somewhere cheap..." as a primary incentive for these rides.
I've used Craigslist "ride shares" between Montreal<>Toronto ($30) on a number of occasions. I fully understood the risks I was taking compared to paying 3x as much for a safer train ride ($100).
The vehicle is advertised as being a Mercedes mini-bus [1] with seating for ~8 people but usually only has 6 passengers and plenty of extra space. The driver was usually an immigrant from China who drove the route everyday, so they know the route well and are always very efficient and reliable. Their lack of english-speaking skills was somewhat of a concern but never caused any issues in practice.
I was more concerned about how they managed to survive on what was basically a minimum-wage payout for a full-day of driving. But there is clearly a supply of workers. Plus they made extra money doing deliveries of newspapers between cities.
Paying for an over-packed Megabus for a comparable $30 price was out of the question because it's always full, always noisy, full of extra stops in between, smells halfway through if you're near the back, etc, etc.
Consumers are capable of making economic cost comparisons. You go on Craigslist searching for bottom-of-the-market rides to save money, there's always a certain expectation of added risk. Same goes with Megabus, almost all of the worst bus drivers I've seen are employed by them, but being outside of the 'sharing' economy seems to protect them from similar scrutiny.
Could you elaborate?
My policy says it does not apply:
"To any vehicle used to carry persons or property for compensation or a fee, including but not limited to delivery of food or any other products...However, a vehicle used in an ordinary carpool on a ride sharing or cost sharing basis is covered."
The question would be whether this is an "ordinary carpool on a cost sharing basis." Lawyers are paid to argue about these things.
I imagine the intent of this is to cover 'informal' car sharing - e.g. you have a roadtrip with a friend and both pay for petrol, or you drive to work with your neighbour and share costs.
Not sure how it would apply to Lyft Carpool - I think initially your insurance company would push back on it.
Do any insurance companies sell passenger insurance to cover accidents when you're the passenger in a car with an underinsured driver?
2. There is something called "uninsured motorist insurance" which covers a variety of situations caused by drivers without insurance. You'd have to check the details of a given policy as to this situation. Even without that, your health, disability, and life insurance should apply.
That covers most garden-variety car wrecks, so there is little need to be concerned about my friend's insurance. I suppose if I were really on top of things, I would ask my friends for proof of insurance anyway, because maybe I would want to sue him for pain and suffering, which his insurance might pay for (my health insurance would not pay for that, or for lost wages.)
Never seen "riding around in someone else's underinsured car" insurance. Typical umbrella policy wouldn't cover that unless I'm negligent. I suppose I could get disability coverage which might help protect against the lost wages from getting injured in someone else's car.
Car-pooling is sufficiently weird for insurers to require you to let them know you're doing it, and they may adjust the premiums.
As for whether I ask: yes, I do. Most of the people I get lifts from are insured as part of their job and a bunch of other people have checked for me; or it's public transport and again other people have checked for me.
2) I guess if that happened my home insurance would cover it. I'm honestly not sure what would be there to cover if I was a passenger though, even if I had to be hospitalized it wouldn't cost a penny(national health care).
If you're signing up to do this as a rider, well I don't think you should given the insurance problems and you not having any guarantee that someone will be held liable if they cause an accident.
Getting into a bad accident with an underinsured driver at fault is a life changing event.
Sounds like an opportunity to me.
If these companies perform background checks, what are they checking for?
An ex-con has paid his or her "debt to society" by being in prison. If we don't let them get a job and earn a living, how will they get rehabilitated in society?
Edit: typo/car/cab.
1. To get from the East Bay to SF in the carpool lane you need 2 passengers (3 people total - or a car that only seats two)
2. The East Bay already has a pretty nice system for this called the Casual Carpool which is probably its biggest competition. The Casual Carpool is just a bunch of spots (usually BART Stations) where drivers can stop and pick up a few other passengers to get in the carpool lane across the bridge and usually the passengers chip in a few bucks for the toll. This system is pretty good and works well considering the need for 3 folks in the car to get carpool lane access. The Lyft model is a lot harder to coordinate picking up 3. The biggest issues with Casual Carpool are that there's no revenue for the driver and it's mostly one way (inbound in the morning). The eastbound after work system is not as efficient, there's a common pickup area downtown with stops indicating destinations but it can be hit or miss on whether passengers are there when you're ready to go home.
Long and short of it I think this is a Peninsula solution not really an East Bay to SF one yet.
It's entirely free, almost entirely grassroots (governments occasionally ask that the pick-ups/drop-offs move slightly), and remarkably safe (1 known incident in >30 years). Having grown up in the area, I was surprised when I casually made reference to it to someone not in the area and they had no idea what I was talking about.
It's that informal and inconsistent group knowledge that gets turned into an app, which formalizes the informal parts, removes the barrier to entry (knowing about the informalities in the first place), and (should) build protections in to ensure conformity to the now established system (payment, insurance, etc).
While HOV lanes are a large incentive for drivers, we have seen that many of our drivers here in Vancouver are looking to either cover the cost of parking and driving, or meet new people. These solutions generally work best in dense metro areas with relatively good public transit (I.E you have to be able to get home, if you can't find a carpool home).
Also interesting, Uber is not allowed to operate under the existing Vancouver taxi regulation. Because carpooling does not provide an income to the driver, the car is not considered a vehicle-for-hire, making systems like Lyft carpool and Spare Rides legal in Vancouver and I'm guessing many other cities that have pushed Uber out. This is a really good way for Lyft to grab those markets before the regulation changes.
I'm curious because I'm planning on starting a similar venture in my home country.
Most of us in the bay area have cars (because public transportation is stinking horrible). I want more to lessen my burden on the environment/save money on gas by sharing the road. A more natural pair would be to easily find people who share my commute and then rotate rides.
I imagine something like this would be a lot easier for municipal governments to swallow, compared to the current "not a cab but yes it's actually a cab" model.
http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/29/6000-words-about-a-pink-mus...
I used Zimride when I was moving from Portland to Los Angeles, I picked up some random guy along the way and dropped him off in SFV. Great way to subsidize gas of the moving truck.
After that it seemed like ZimRide went for the University market instead of having total strangers effectively do e-hitchhiking.
Now it seems Enterprise Car Rental bought the company.
Seems a bit of a shame really...
Lyft is scaling by leveraging technology to be better. Uber is doing that but also burning cash opening in new markets. The only way Lyft can compete is to out-innovate Uber.
On the upside, I had a friend who was a rider, and had lots of stories of terrible drivers. Once he witnessed the driver hit a person and then drive off, and then drop off my friend. My friend called the police, but I guess with Lyft carpool this type of thing wouldn't happen, or at least not as often?
Lyft would probably rate the drivers like they do normally and stop allowing them to drive for the carpool. You can't prevent accidents like that, but you can prevent those people from doing it again with your service fairly easily.
Depends on how big the market is/how it's shaped; if there are more riders who are willing to pay than drivers and drivers can easily find a rider not too far out of their route then the cars at the carpool will dry up.
It really depends on the area though. I am referring to the 85/101 merge near all the Google exits.
I've never stepped foot on the West coast, but I found this sentence really amusing! I guess I never realized the extent to which GAFA was embedded in the landscape.
(Nevermind this East-coast pleb. Carry on!)
As to the question of incentives, I have pay-by-the-mile car insurance (from MetroMile, in SF). They would make more money if I took a detour and drove a little further, or if this service caused me to drive to work more frequently.
Maybe at reduced lyft fees.
Which is a risk a service like this faces.
It's exciting to see one of the ridesharing/ride-hailing companies focus their attention on where the pain is still high - the commute. 100M Americans still wake up everyday, grab their keys, and get in their car to drive to work. On average, that drive lasts at least 25 minutes.
The negative impact of driving alone is enormous - congestion in our communities, $250B out of our pockets every year, and a huge toll on the environment. Autonomous vehicles, hyperloops, or whatever the future has in store might change this - but not for a while.
So, carpooling is obviously something I've spent a lot of time thinking about - and I think Lyft is doing some smart things here. I like the Rider scheduling buckets. We do something similar with Scoop - every trip is scheduled with "time slots" that help align Rider and Drivers' schedules.
And of course, Lyft's availability around the Bay Area is nice. For Scoop, we really focus on partnering with employers and 511 (https://carpool.511.org/) to strategically open "routes" into different Bay Area cities. We do this carefully, to ensure that commuters can really rely on their local Scoop community for a carpool every single day.
There are also some important ways that carpooling is really different from ride-hailing, and it'll be interesting to see how Lyft, Uber, etc. address that. For example, who you go with really matters. 45 minutes in a car isn't the same as 10. How you get home really matters too. In the case of no carpool, a regular Lyft or Uber with surge-pricing will make for an unhappy commuter.
Our team of 13 works really hard every day to try to take cars off the road, and are excited by anyone who wants to try to do that too. To that end, we just opened up our newest route today to tackle congestion in a new community. Starting today, you can schedule commute trips with Scoop into Palo Alto. All trips to Palo Alto are just $1 - sponsored by the Palo Alto TMA and Stanford Research Park. And we're excited to have great partners like the Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce and companies like Tesla, Palantir and HP.
PS: If you do want to try to help, we're hiring! Email us at jobs@takescoop.com or visit https://angel.co/takescoop/jobs.
I don't do Casual Carpool right now because of 1) insurance 2) not knowing who the passengers are 3) not really knowing how to do it.
I hope Lyft will tweak this to work better for my use case. Otherwise, it will probably be a US-101 solution only.
If I found a good driver I would just deal directly with them because (a) I know they share my route and (b) I don't need to get to know them again each time I commute. That would be money off the table for Lyft though.
But I would not use the service because I have kids to drop off and also I may not finish at the same time every day.
$10 per ride is really not a lot of incentive to drive an hour to the city with company that you don't want, who may not want to listen to your music/podcast, or smell your farts, or listen to you sing along to Rebecca Black.
lyft is bleeding is dry with this new service, i highly recommend against it.
