DRAFT Magazine

By Zach Fowle

Shawn Fernando had a problem, and beer was to blame.

“I was at a bar with a friend from high school, and we’d tied a couple on,” said Fernando, a citizen of Austin, Texas. “When we were leaving the bar, we were about to call a cab, and we realized the parking lot in front of the bar had a sign up that said ‘all cars left in the lot will be towed at 8:30.’ We were like, what do we do? You’re sort of damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

Fernando and his friend ended up taking a taxi home and waking up very early the next morning to rescue their endangered car. Annoying, yes, but from the ordeal sprang an idea: Why not offer drinkers a way to get home safely, in their own cars?

“I realized there are a lot of people in Austin who have that problem every day,” Fernando says. “Those people don’t want to be driving their cars, but some of the choose to drive their cars because it seems like the best option at the time. But if you give them an alternative, then hopefully they won’t make that decision.”

Square Patrol, a service designed to get potential drunk drivers home safely, was born.

Scott Judd came to the same realization when he founded Minnesota-based DWI Ride Home in 2007. The idea is simple enough: like a taxi, drivers provide rides to patrons who have had just a little too much. Unlike a taxi, however, DWI Ride Home dispatches a team of two drivers — one to drive customers home in their own cars, the other to pick him up when he’s done.

“The people love that they don’t have to worry about their cars,” Judd says. “I believe that’s the hook, that people don’t have to leave their cars. We offer them an option.”

It’s an option that has become increasingly important to drivers over the past decade.

According to MADD, someone is killed by a drunk driver every 40 minutes, and in 2007 an estimated 12,998 people died in drunk driving related crashes. Over 1.46 million drivers were arrested in 2006 for driving under the influence of alcohol or narcotics, and one out of every 139 licensed drivers in the United States is arrested for DWI. The average cost for a first offense DWI can be astronomical. According to the Orange County, Calif. chapter of MADD, with all the fines, attorney fees, and insurance increases you’ll have to pay, you’re looking at a total price tag of about $8,000 to $11,000.

Judd says the cost in Minnesota can be even greater: “From start to finish, you could easily exceed $30,000, even on your first one. Huge. And the cost of an average run of ours is $40.”

As people take notice of the convenience of paying to have their cars driven home, the popularity of designated driver services seems to grow ever greater.

“When we first started, we were just a little company. We had two or three teams that just worked Friday and Saturday,” Judd says. “Now we’re up to well over 200 teams, and we run seven days a week, 24 hours a day. The industry’s bloated; we can hardly contain it.”

New companies are popping up across the U.S. to fill the growing demand for the services DWI Ride Home provides. Designated Driver Services provides safe rides for people in Los Angeles, Designated Drivers, Inc. serves Las Vegas and Phoenix, and tipsy bar-goers in Columbia, S.C. can call Designated Driver of America.

“It’s something new. It’s like an evolution of the transit industry,” Judd says.

Fernando’s company, Square Patrol, may just be the next step in that evolution. Like DWI Ride Home, Square Patrol provides patrons with a designated driver to take them — and their cars — home safely. But the Austin-based non-profit does things a little differently.

“We send a person on a foldable scooter,” Fernando says. “The scooter folds up and goes in your trunk, so the driver can drive your car home, and when he gets to your house, he’ll unfold the scooter and ride off.”

Square Patrol has a fleet of four Di Blasi R7 folding motorbikes, small scooters that weigh 67 pounds and fold down to about the size of a large suitcase. Although they only go about 32 mph, using the scooters alleviates the need for a second driver, and they get nearly 100 miles per gallon.

“The scooters are just really cool,” Fernando says. “It’s like a magic trick when you fold them up.”

Use of the scooters has also helped Square Patrol gain a bit of notoriety, Fernando says.

“Taxi cab drivers drive cars. This serves to separate us in the mind of the observer. If you see somebody riding this scooter, you’ll automatically know what he does. The scooter is the tool of our trade.”

Austin has one of the highest DWI conviction rates in the country, with police officers making over 6,000 DWI arrests per year. The city also spends about $85 million a year on drunk driving accidents, a massive expense that Fernando hopes Square Patrol can help reduce.

“It’s coming along,” Fernando says. “Hopefully in years to come, we’ll get to the point where it’s undeniable that we’ve had an impact on the problem.”

A former DRAFT intern, Zach Fowle previous wrote about beer openers for DRAFTMag.com. He is seriously considering trading in his car for a foldable scooter.