Discussion on:

Cracking the carpool conundrum

Half the time I will be running errands at lunchtime or on my way home from work. This makes it difficult to participate in car pool programs. If someone could figure some way to accommodate that situation, participation would increase.

On the negative side, what happens when the driver gets sick unexpectedly, or the vehicle breaks down...
Now instead of one person either missing or being late for work there are four.

Next is insurance rates.. as soon as the Insurance companies see a way to increase their coffers... they are just going to say " well you are in a car pool we'll just let you slide on the increase in premiums" yeah! Right!
Not to mention the liabilities some slick lawyer will come up with when a carpooler gets injured...because of a collision.

Jeff Cardinal in his response to the 'Cracking the Carpool Conumdrum', an excellent story about how SAP used some software from Ridespring to get employees to sign up for ridesharing, said: Half the time I will be running errands at lunchtime or on my way home from work. This makes it difficult to participate in car pool programs. If someone could figure some way to accommodate that situation, participation would increase.
Now a new approach to carpooling called flexible carpooling provides that potential. See http://www.flexiblecarpooling.org.

Its hard to car pool when companies are pushing more and more of their exempt employees to put in uncompensated overtime. This makes workers unsure of their departure time. Car polling only works if every body can go home at the official close of business with out being made to feel guilty.

Everyone here is listing the problems--why? I've been carpooling for nearly 20 years, and pretty much every problem folks have thrown up so far have come up during that time, and, guess what? Where there's a will, there's a way. Just like at your job, you adapt to changes and move ahead.

My experience tells me that instead of coming up with problems, you just need to find another person interested in cutting their driving expenses in half or more, and you'll figure out the rest. For instance, I save my errand running to the days I drive (easy if you plan ahead). We meet at a rendezvous location near our homes, then commute 20 miles, then when we return, we're dropped off at our cars where we're free to do our errands before heading home.

One of the best features for me is that I get a nice nap on the way home when I'm not driving--what could be better?

SAP first achieved success with employer-focused cloud-based carpooling in 2008. How they did it: http://greenstartupstory.com/2013/05/07/sap-ridespring2008/