car2go NA, which describes itself as North America’s largest one-way car-sharing service, has launched a pilot program that rewards car2go members for taking free online road safety education courses.
The National Safety Council courses, which normally cost up to $49.95 each, focus on road safety and distracted driving.
car2go, a Daimler subsidiary, said it expects the pilot program to begin in the next 30 days. The pilot program will enable members in New York City and Washington, D.C. – who will be chosen at random – to receive car2go drive-time credit for taking National Safety Council-approved online road safety courses.
car2go will evaluate the success of the pilot program with the goal of making it available to more car2go members – and in additional car2go locations – in the coming months.
The company made the announcement at the Vision Zero Cities conference in New York City.
“As the world’s largest car-sharing service, car2go can play a major role in helping to achieve Vision Zero’s objective of eliminating road fatalities,” said Paul DeLong, CEO of car2go NA. “We are continually enhancing our vehicles with advanced safety features, and we are proud to say that of the 8.75 million trips our North American members took last year, just .01 percent of them involved a road safety incident.”
Car2go also announced that it has joined the National Safety Council’s Road to Zero Coalition, a group of public and private entities aiming to eliminate traffic deaths within the next 30 years.
“Although car crashes are 100 percent preventable, we lost 40,000 people on our roads in 2016,” said Deborah Hersman, president and CEO of the National Safety Council. “NSC is pleased to partner with car2go in our mission to end preventable deaths on our nation’s roadways.”
According to an August 2016 report by Frost & Sullivan, the global car-sharing market is expected to grow from 7.9 million people in 2015 to more than 36 million people by 2025.
In 2016, car2go grew its global customer base by 43 percent to 2.2 million members, and today the service boasts more than 2.3 million members, according to the company.
