Why CarPool?

Our main motivation for starting this project is to decrease the transport emissions in qathet. Every time two people share a car journey and use one car instead of two, they cause half as many emissions between them. But there are other great reasons to carpool too: using half as much gas means spending half as much on gas, and carpooling can help us connect with neighbours, and give more options to people without their own mobility, so it’s a great way to make friends and help people in the community too.

Shrinking our carbon footprint

The scientific consensus is that we need to collectively decrease our carbon emissions very quickly: the UN’s IPCC calculates that a responsible annual carbon footprint is 2 tonnes a year. This equates to using just 17 litres of gas a week, or putting no more than $30 – $35 in the gas tank each week. Of course, that’s forgetting all our other sources of emissions, such as heating, purchases, holidays, etc.

Ultimately, in qathet we need to massively decrease our transport emissions to help combat climate change, and carpooling is a great way to do this.

Staying safe

Neither qathet carpool nor Carpool World can guarantee the safety of people connecting through our websites. You need to take full responsibility for ensuring your personal safety when interacting with other people whom you meet through CarpoolWorld. But we can give some tips on how to stay safe:

• When you connect with someone to start carpooling, ask if they can connect you with a couple of their friends who can vouch for them. You might do this by seeing if you have mutual friends on facebook, and using those, or otherwise just ask them to give you a couple of their friends’ phone numbers or email addresses so you can check whether the person you are connecting with is safe and people know you are carpooling with them.

• Let a friend know about your carpool journey and who you’re carpooling with, and check in with them before and after it.

• You do not have to disclose your actual home address, work address, or phone numbers, and you do not even have to disclose your permanent email address to other users of CarpoolWorld.

• Carry a mobile or cell phone while driving or being driven in case of an emergency.

• If you want, you can record the driver’s license and car registration information of the other person’s car. Obtain a copy of the driver’s insurance card or record the driver’s automobile insurance carrier and policy information.

Money

Qathet carpool and Carpool World are both free to use. Of course, you’ll probably want to share the savings of the journeys between you and your carpool match. How you do this is up to you, but we think the best approach to this is to combine fairness and generosity. It might be best to split the cost of gas, or if you are sharing a commute maybe the passenger brings along a coffee or snack for the driver. And if one of the people carpooling is more financially secure than the other, hopefully they will be happy to help out by paying for the gas themselves.

Get started

Ready to carpool? Click on the button to join our Carpool World group and get carpooling: