Need a Lyft? SoberRide Offers Free Rides on St. Patrick’s Day
Photo from Fairfax County Government.
How are you celebrating St. Patrick’s Day this year? A parade? Green beer? What about getting home safely? Once again, the Washington Regional Alcohol Program (WRAP) is offering people in the DC area a free ride home (up to $15) between 4 p.m. Sunday and 4 a.m. Monday through the ride share app Lyft.
WRAP’s SoberRide program has been providing free rides on holidays since 1991, and between October 2017 and September 2018, the nonprofit supplied a program-high of over 5,100 rides home.
Their goal is to reduce impaired driving on holidays where drinking alcohol is part of the celebration, including Independence Day, Halloween, the couple weeks spanning Christmas and New Year’s Eve, Cinco de Mayo, and of course, St. Patrick’s Day.
“We’re hoping to help anyone who may otherwise be driving home,” said WRAP President Kurt Erickson, who cited the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s report that alcohol is involved in about 37 percent of all St. Patrick’s Day fatalities.
The Maryland Department of Transportation reported an average of about 7,000 vehicle crashes involving alcohol occur each year, and in Montgomery County alone, crashes involving alcohol accounted for 24 percent of all traffic fatalities in 2017, a 14.5 percent increase from 2016 according to WRAP.
When SoberRide began, the program partnered with taxi cabs in the region and allowed people to call free or reduced rate taxis on a hotline number. Now, partnering with Lyft, users simply input a promo code before hailing a ride as usual on the app, and that code provides the user up to $15 towards a ride home.
The promo code becomes available at 3 p.m. on St. Patrick’s Day on the SoberRide website, and anyone 21 and older with the Lyft app in the Washington, DC coverage area can take advantage of this opportunity while supplies last.
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