How it Works

How RidesNearMe Works

..............................................................................................................

RidesNearMe looks at you and another potential carpooler and compares the total distances between you and your destination vs. your potential carpooler and their destination.   By displaying low distance routes, the tool prompts you with potential carpool partners.

RidesNearMe tries to keep things simple.  We don't make you fill in pages of forms, we don't make you record your addresses or places of business with us.  We work with businesses to make it simple - we know where you work, your provide your postal code to the system, and we find you matches!

By showing you potential matches, we allow you to use your understanding of preferred routes, potential adjustments you might make to make rides better, and allow you to email potential matches to see what might work!

By letting your brain do a little bit more of the carpool matching, but graphically showing you on maps potential matches, this allows computers to do what they do best (do math and organize data), and allows you to do what you do best - contact and communicate with people.

Once you've decided to contact a match, our email software sends a contact note to your potential match.  That's the last of our system's work for that match!  From then on, if your match decides to email you back, you use your regular email to decide if your carpool might work.

By minimizing the amount of data that RidesNearMe keeps, we minimize privacy issues and other data escape issues.  We have been pro-active in desiging our system to ensure privacy and minimize data loss potential from day 1.  Minimal data retention means minimal potential or worry about data losses.

Our privacy policy is simple. We respect your privacy and would never sell nor release email addresses or postal codes to any other party.  Period. The only reason we'll contact you is to let you know about potential carpool matches OR to check up on your carpool to ensure its still running successfully. We do this to provide your employers with metrics and other data so they can determine how successful their carpooling program has become!