Prepaid cab card: get home free

Launched in eleven Minneapolis suburbs this month, Get Home Free is a flat rate, prepaid cab card that gets its holder home safely. Mainly targeted at teenagers and college students, the concept’s initiators are aiming to help out kids who are stuck with car trouble, have been drinking, or whose ride home has fallen through. Cardholders place a call to the Get Home Free hotline, and a car is immediately dispatched to bring them home, no questions asked. Teen drinking and driving is a serious issue. As reported in the Star Tribune: “According to the 2004 Minnesota Student Survey, 28 percent of high school seniors reported having driven after using alcohol or drugs at least once in the previous year. Also, almost 40 percent of seniors reported that they had ridden with someone who had been using substances.” Having a Get Home Free card as an emergency back-up should help keep some of them off the road. Cards can be purchased online for USD 64.99 and are valid throughout the Twin Cities metro area, with statewide expansion to all key cities in Minnesota planned for 2008, and to high school and college campuses in all 50 states by 2010. In order to offer the service 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, Get Home Free has partnered with Airport Taxi and Town Taxi, Minnesota’s largest fleet of taxis with over 300 vehicles. To spread the word, Get Home Free will give away one card every month to a random MySpace friend. Useful and straightforward, this is one to start up locally. (Related: Cabs for and by women.) Spotted by: Ozgur Alaz