Carpooling: 6 Things You lose When you Don’t Share a Car

Carpooling (also known as ridesharing or car sharing) is a straightforward and practical concept: some people share a ride so that more than one person travels in a car. There’s a variety of websites that connect drivers with passengers. They’re used by both tourists and locals, for rich and diverse reasons. The advantages are fantastic, and if you’re already a user, you know everything about them. If that’s not the case, you should be aware of what you’re missing. After finding out, you might join the network.

1. Table of Contents

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   Your money

Car sharing is a great way to save money, both for drivers and passengers. The maths, in this case, is as simple as it almost never gets; the cost of traveling gets proportionally lower as the number of passengers gets higher. Since the car is supposed to drive anyway, why to keep it half empty if you can make it full? As a driver, by taking extra passengers, you might save up to 75% of the cost (assuming you’ve got a standard five-person car; if your vehicle is bigger, then wow, you can save even more!). As a passenger, you can often pay for the transport less than you would if you chose a train or bus. Not using ridesharing is just economically illogical.

2. Everything you could buy and do for the money you’d save when carpooling

If you didn’t spend so much money on fuel, you could book a more comfortable hotel for your holidays; have a dinner in an exquisite restaurant, visit cinema or party all night. You miss all these things. All this delicious ice-cream you’d otherwise buy, all the entrance tickets to fascinating museums, perhaps even a parachute jump or your favorite musician’s concert! Don’t do it to yourself. Don’t overpay for transport and do something fun instead.

3. Not only you’re losing, but nature too

With basically no effort you can contribute to our precious environment’s wellbeing. If you don’t share the rides, not only you pay the price, but the environment does so with you. Costs incurred by nature are worth more than the shortages of cash in your wallet. What you waste is the money, but nature loses its purity, health, and beauty. An important thing to remember, each time nature loses something, you’re affected too, just as all human beings. There are lots of small things you can do to keep your environment cozier and prettier. By using carpooling, you limit the amount of pollution that gets into the air each time someone drives a car. Make a trip to a lovely place, like a national park, seaside or remote village. Share the ride with someone who was also planning to go there. When you reach the destination, step out of the car, take a deep breath and be proud of yourself, because you’ve just done something to keep this air this way! 

4. Meeting great people while carpooling

Lots of beautiful people support the car-sharing concept. Among numerous users, there’s a lot of individuals you’d surely get along with. Your new potential friends sit behind the wheel while you drive alone. You could be together, chat, exchange travel tips or sing along with the bands being played on the radio. Carpooling is a fabulous way to meet new people. Think of all those conversations you could have with other passengers. When people travel together, they tend to bond and share a lot with each other. The situation itself makes it happen. You’re all on the road, sharing space of the vehicle. There aren’t many distractions, except perhaps the views if you drive along scenic routes, but that’s even better because then you can be amazed together.

5. Opportunity to visit unique places

Some areas are tough to reach. Buses don’t go there, neither do trains. Because there are no airports, planes don’t fly there, or budget airlines haven’t discovered the location and flight tickets are too expensive. You can always check if someone’s going to this unique place by car, perhaps there’ll be a local coming back to his charming village or a painter on her way to a remote mountain retreat. Besides, car sharing comes in handy when you want to go somewhere, but don’t know where. Did you just get two days off and haven’t got enough time to make plans? Check where people from your town are heading to and join them.

6. The joys of a road trip

Nothing feels quite like a road trip. Trains are atmospheric, modern buses usually very comfortable, flying is exciting, yet still: road trip is a road trip. Even if you like other means of transportation too, at least once in a while it’s just great to travel by car. Thanks to car sharing this fantastic experience are more accessible. People use carpooling services for various reasons, many of them simply go back to work each day by the same route and search for someone to share the expenses with, some only need to reach a particular location very quickly, but among them, you’ll find adventurous travelers as well. Look for some exciting offers or post one, you might find the perfect travel mates. Perhaps you’ll get along so well on the way; you’ll decide to spend the rest of the trip together too, but even if not, you can at least have a fun ride. Open windows, the wind in your hair, music from the loudspeakers and stunning landscapes – doesn’t it sound appealing?

Now you know exactly what you miss by not being a car-sharing user. What’s the next step? Start doing it and gain all the benefits! First of all, you should register on one of the websites that connect drivers with passengers. There are lots of ride-sharing services in many different countries, here’s a list of several examples:

• Blablacar.com – French company, widely used across Europe
• Carpooling.com – the largest network in Europe
• Carmacarpool.com – for travelers riding around America (if you’re going to U.S., don’t miss the Route 66!)
• Zimride.com – the biggest rideshare program in the United States
• JayRide.co.nz – for explorations of picturesque New Zealand
• Rides.com.mx – joyful rides around Mexico
• Zazcar.com.br – check if any Brazilian drivers listen to bossa nova in their cars (or, if you’re a Brazilian driver, introduced bossa nova to your passengers!)
• Yeba.me – for everyone who’s in Chile
• Mitfahrgelegenheit.de – a German website
• Letsride.in – for globetrotters and locals in India

Share this article, so that your friends could enjoy the advantages of carpooling with you!