Recently a study was conducted to see if people who use a FREE safe ride drank more.  We at safe rides believe that offereing FREE safe rides is not the answer since it leave people with more money and a greater incentive to start abusing alcohol.  The key is to find the right balance between making the rides as cost effective as possible, while still allowing people to enjoy the night out. below is the article that was found on ScienceDirect.com

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That’s the new catch phrase in the Kahlua advertisements.  They could not have been more correct.   Drunk driving does start with an excuse “I’m not going to drink too much therefore its ok if I drive” “I’ll have one of my friends drive on the way back” “I’m not that drunk” “I’ve driven when I was in much worse shape so I’ll be ok”, the list can go on forever.  However the most important excuse has become embedded into our psyche “I don’t have any other way of getting to and from the club”.  In a survey conducted by SRU over 90% of people going out claimed how else would they get to and from the club.  These individuals claimed they didn’t think any drunk driving incident could happen to them. Worse yet all of the individuals claimed campaigns that instruct us to be responsible drinkers never even became a thought when going out. Lately alcohol industry has been placing messages at the end of their commercials such as “Drink Responsibly” etc.  When we asked, students remembered the ad but surprisingly said they didn’t remember the drink responsibility part or they didn’t really pay attention to it.  They all remembered the rest of the ad.  It seems that these drink responsibly ads have become more of a formality than to have an actual effect and therefore are being ignored.

Moe Sattar Founder of Safe Rides Unlimited said “All the messaging campaigns are great but they don’t really give us an actual alternative.”  He also stated that “college students and general public are more than accepting of a real solutions.  The proof of such a statement is in the phone calls that come in by the hundreds from people praising our services and making safe ride reservations.”

The bottom line in this whole thing is this.  Drunk driving can be reduced to nearly non existent if advertisers realize that instead of wasting money on messages, lets provide people with a choice.  A choice that would allow people to make the right decision.  A choice that will be a lot more effective in reducing alcohol industry liabilities.  A choice that will be profitable to all parties involved from the users to the providers. A choice that will make people responsible for their actions instead of blaming them on lack of alternatives. Safe Rides Unlimited is a testament to such a choice.

Lets allow our minds to become creative so we can get away from talking and start taking action.  Lets explore options and with that we will have made the greatest change in the old mentality.  A Mentality that did not allow you to even think about any available alternatives to a mentality that knows that we can be safe and have fun by simply using Safe Rides Unlimited.

Safe Rides Unlimited founder Moe Sattar informed us that SRU will be joining forces with Favbars.com, a complete night club directory website that operates like myspace where clubs can create profiles.  General public can than become fans of their favorite clubs and receive updates automatically.  Secondly, SRU is also joining forces with Snapfoo.com, an extremely cool and efficient photo blogging site.  Snapfoo.com allows people to take pics via their phones and email them directly to their profiles on favbars.com or other networking sites.

Mr. Sattar stated he is extremely pleased with the prospects of partnering with the two sites.  He also said that together SRU and its partners will make nightlife information streamlined for the public.  Now people will have the ability to interact directly with the people that run their favorite venues.

Specific details of the partnership were not disclosed but Mr. Sattar assured the details will be made available in the near future.  So far we know that favbars.com is powering the new venue system on Safe Rides Unlimited website.

We look forward to see what comes out of this seemingly excellent partnership. Stay tuned…

Safe Rides Unlimited was mentioned in this Time Out NY article as a service providing affordable safe rides to people.

http://www.timeout.com/newyork/articles/spas-sport/9097/safety-first

Safe Rides Unlimited has been providing services to the greater New York and New Jersey area for over a year now. SRU’s growth can be credited mostly to word of mouth recommendations. SRU takes pride in the fact that it has been able to attract new users every day thru recomendations of other users. This proves without a doubt that SRU has a program that works and is extremely effective and efficient. SRU program is saving people money and providing them with a level of service and reliability they can not expect to recieve from any other safe ride system in the country.

On Friday Aug 22, 2008 Safe Rides Unlimited founder/president Amanat Moe Sattar informed that Safe Rides Unlimited has entered into contract with Cablevision subsidiary Rainbow Advertisments. The purpose of this contract is to bring the message to the masses by conducting a year long tv ad campaign. According to Mr. Sattar SRU is entering this contract because of tremendous success of the program and its ability to serve even more users every week. He hopes this campaign will help spread the message of a real available alternative to drunk driving faster and to a larger audience. This tv ad campaign will air over 50 ads per week starting with Northern NJ. Networks that will air ads include MTV, VH1, E, FX, Comedy Central and a few other popular channels. Mr. Sattar says he is very optimistic about the results from this campaign.

SRU currently provides over 500 people with safe ride services. Thats over 500 people that utilize the life saving roundtrip safe rides, pay no cover charges at clubs and don’t wait on any lines. According to Mr. Sattar, SRU safe rides require a per person donation of usually what most clubs charge for cover. In simpler words SRU rides are practically free if you consider that you would have to pay cover charge and/or wait on lines if you did not use SRU safe rides, not to mention SRU helps avoid all the other hassels that come along with driving if your going for a night on the town.