SAVE MONEY Putting aside the sad, dark, and gloomy effects of coal, natural gas, oil, etc. on the health of the Earth and the conditions around it, think about how much money you could save. I've been reading a lot about carpooling today, and it's not strange or surprising to hear about people who save a couple hundred dollars a month on transportation costs by carpooling. In some cities, if your car has a lot of people in it, you can also save money on tolls and parking (who are living in a building, etc.). Not only does driving in the city cost money for gas, tolls, and parking, but it also wears out cars. All the stopping and starting wears out engines, brakes, gearboxes, and tyres. The American Car Association says that driving a car costs an average of 26.2 cents per mile, and that's just for gas and wear and tear. DECONGESTS ROADS A new US study called "Commuting in America" says: In 2005, drivers in the United States wasted 4.2 billion hours sitting in traffic. 2.9 billion gallons of gas were wasted because of traffic jams. The average driver in Los Angeles wastes 72 hours a year going nowhere. Hundreds of thousands of cars would be taken off the road every day if everyone's cars were put together. This would make trips faster and cut down on traffic jams. It would also save money on gas and car maintenance. Some places even have special or named lanes for cars that belong to multiple people (who live in the same building, etc.), and I think we'll see more of this in the years to come. SOCIAL/EMOTIONAL You'll meet other people if you ride with them. People are getting more and more disconnected in our online world, which can be bad for many people. For some people, nothing gets them ready for the daily grind like a pep talk and a counselling session right after. Also, if driving to work is stressful for you, car sharing can help make the trip to and from work less stressful. You might even have time to do other things during the drive, like get ready for meetings or other things. Technology makes us flexible. In the beginning of car sharing, it was pretty common, which made it hard to find people you got along with to share a ride with. All of that has changed since the World Wide Web came along. There are now a lot of online services that make it easy to find people to rideshare with. This gives you more freedom to set your own schedule. Better online things that are useful or valuable will offer the following: (based on land area)—Matching departure and destination routes Time-based means that the times of departure and arrival (at a destination) are matched. Personal Preferences: Things like whether you want to drive or be a passenger, your gender preferences, whether you smoke or don't smoke, and even what kind of music you like. That's a pretty good idea. I would go completely and utterly crazy listening to rap for an hour (no offence to rappers meant). Here are some online stores to check out that sell both useful and valuable things for your car:
