

The Secret Lives of Zipcar Drivers - mef
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2012/07/secret-lives-zipcar-drivers/2638/

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roel_v
People are rational, news at 11?

I also LOL'ed at this:

"They care about the environment. They want to take cars off the road. They’ve
created a trusting community to share assets that previous generations
insisted on owning. This is all a very European notion,"

Sure this is a very European notion. Come have a look at our roads and
landscape and streets to see for yourself _rollseyes_. Then again, I guess you
can't expect a marketing professor to understand concepts like 'observer bias'
or 'sample size'.

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dman
Some of zipcar's policies make me feel that they are just using the word
community to lower their operational costs rather than actually believing in
it. Eg

a) If the person ahead of you is late, zipcar will not automatically give you
an extension for the time lost because you got the car late. They will if you
call them, but not by default. b) They charge a late fee because the person
next in line is being inconvenienced. How about splitting the late fee with
the person being inconvenienced? c) If you have a zipcar plan where you prepay
then getting money out when you cancel the service used to be problematic as
of 2 years ago.

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BadassFractal
What are people's thoughts on switching from car ownership to using Zipcar if
you're living in a city like SF and need the car maybe once-twice a week for
grocery shopping or occasional drive to South Bay? Does it pay for itself?

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CookWithMe
I don't know how good the service is in SF, but generally I can recommend it
strongly for this use case. My parents did that around 2000 for 3 or 4 years
(in Germany, in a bigger city). We rented a car once a week for grocery
shopping and sometimes for a family trip (we even did a 2-week holiday trip
with a rented car).

With this usage we definitely saved money. And a lot of time, because you
don't have to care about repairing the car, taxes, ...

My father got a new job, moved to a small city without a car sharing service
and bought a mercedes. He probably wouldn't "downgrade", but he is constantly
annoyed because he has to care about all the small details (changing tires in
the winter, refilling oil, then often small things like light bulbs break,
...).

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zaroth
After the fatal accident of that Googler's car in a car-sharing arrangement, I
would assume that any 'real' ride-sharing is significantly reduced. There's
just too much personal liability compared to AirBnB type of sharing.

A car is a complex piece of machinery. You keep everything on your car running
absolutely perfectly? Well, it's great if you can afford that. Probably you're
not in the target demographic.

Most people who share their own rides assume it's at least going to break
even, if not much more. But if there's an accident, how easy is it for the
driver to just claim it was the car? They can ditch the fault if the car
itself was faulty. There's just too much incentive for a stranger to take
advantage and cost you a lot of money.

The premise of ride sharing is the willingness to put yourself at someone
else's mercy. It's a basic foundation of trust between two non-familiar people
that doesn't exist in our culture.

OK, so take the human component out of it. What's left is a for-profit
corporation handing cars out for cheap. No one should be surprised when people
take them up on the offer out of economic benefit! They are able to provide
cars for cheap, if they are in your area, and you want a cheap char, why
wouldn't you use them?

I think they should fully accept your fate, and pivot into the worlds absolute
BEST rental car company. Just maximize utilization! They've built all the
infrastructure they need, they could kill it in this space like UBER is
killing it in valet.

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yardie
_It's a basic foundation of trust between two non-familiar people that doesn't
exist in our culture._

What? Trust is the very bedrock of civilization. You trust people in little
ways every second of everyday. You trust the mailman isn't reading your mail,
you trust the coffee at the diner isn't contaminated, you trust the health
inspector that inspected that diner, and so on.

~~~
zaroth
Trust that people won't commit felonies is one thing. But businesses don't win
over customers that way.

All business is about establishing trust. But standard practice in business is
never to expose yourself to undue risk. The business side of ride sharing just
doesn't compute, because the benefits don't outweigh the risks of letting
someone else drive your car in exchange for money.

Businesses carry insurance, and they operate under a completely different tort
of liability. A well operated business will never risk sending employees to
jail because a car they rented crashed. They may be fined, but you would need
to prove willful negligence to get a criminal charge.

On the other hand, lending your car out as a individual exposes you to massive
civil and potentially criminal liability. You don't have to literally booby-
trap your car to be charged, you could be charged merely for a component
failing at the wrong moment (hindsight is 20/20, and juries are people).

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gersh
From the comments to the article, Chicago's I-Go Car Sharing's consumer survey
seems to showed "helping the environment" as the 6th most important reason for
being a member.

I wonder if this is about car sharing in general, or more a reflection of
Zipcar? Do people just not like Zipcar? Does Zipcar have specific policies
that anger people?

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URSpider94
6th most important means "not very important".

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amalag
Will we see car co-op's in the same way we see grocery store co-ops? That
would be more of a community, but I think the comparison of zip-cars to hotel
rooms is quite apt.

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rhizome
One guy in the article touches on it: many succumb to the moral hazard to be a
traffic menace. Some of the worst drivers on the road are car-share members.

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rsanchez1
Honestly, their findings are what I would have assumed in the first place. It
makes more sense to me that people would use Zipcar because it's more
convenient than buying your own car and paying insurance on it. The social and
environmental factors seem to me more like an "oh by the way", rather than
primary motivators.

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omegaworks
I didn't even know they had a messageboard. I just found a coat in the trunk
of the mini cooper I just rented. I had the strong urge to just throw it away
because it was taking up space I was using for groceries.

Instead I left it in the car, in case its old owners came looking for it. I
didn't want to get charged for leaving trash though...

~~~
malandrew
Seems like there should be a feature that allows you to alert the previous
driver of belongings left in the car without violating that person's privacy
by providing contact info.

