Designated driver service brings promise, questions to Kent
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At the end of a night in Kent’s revitalized downtown, patrons who have frequented the area’s establishments are often intoxicated, and in the need of a ride home.
Taxi cab services have existed in Kent for years and are often a go-to option for these patrons, but a new player is preparing to enter the field.
On Oct. 1, Kent State senior Gary Enos will open his designated driver service, Speedy DD, for the first time.
“Obviously, Kent’s a big college town, there’s a big bar scene down here and there’s also a large number of reported DUIs from the Kent area every year,” Enos said. “We figured there’s definitely a market here, and there’s definitely a beneficial service, not only to our customers but to the community that we can fulfill.”
In Portage County, 403 arrests have been made for operating a vehicle under the influence so far in 2013. In the past 21 months, 874 arrests have been made. But the most harrowing statistic, and one that has at least partially driven Enos to start his company, is the 453 fatal OVI crashes that occurred in Ohio in 2012.
Enos’ company will start delivering patrons and their vehicles for a flat-rate charge of $25, but not before the customer signs the Speedy DD waiver, which includes nine main categories of terms:
- Customer’s vehicle is insured, registered and in drivable condition.
- Customer will pay for the services and any fees, charges or fines.
- Customer assumes all risks.
- Drivers may refuse service.
- Company is not liable for any loss, injury, death or damages.
- Customer will indemnify, defend and hold harmless the company.
- Customer will not sue the company and agrees to arbitrate.
- This agreement will be binding on customer’s family, heirs, assigns and personal representatives.
- This agreement will apply to and be binding upon customer’s future use of the company’s services, without signing another contract.
Kent’s city ordinance’s definition potentially leaves Speedy DD’s in a legal gray area.
Enos says his company is not a taxi service, but instead a vehicle-delivery service.
“You don’t need to be drunk for us to carry this service out for you,” Enos said. “We literally are just a service that will come get your car — under an agreed set of terms, which are on our waiver — and then deliver it to another location.”
Is there a legal problem?
The legality of the service is in question, though.
Under Kent city ordinance 749.01, a taxicab company means every corporation, company, association, joint stock association, person, firm or co-partnership, their lessees, trustees, receivers or trustees appointed by any court, owning, controlling, operating, maintaining or managing one or more taxicabs within the city. Enos said he will be the only driver authorized to drive customer cars, followed by a driver in his or her own car who will follow to provide Enos a ride back downtown.
However, a taxicab is defined as “any motor driven vehicle engaged in the business of carrying passengers for hire or fare or offered for hire or fare to the public for transportation. Enos will be carrying passengers in their own vehicle, leaving him in somewhat of a gray area, Kent city police lieutenant Jim Prusha said.
“If it turns out they’re not [operating legally], and they’re stopped acting as a taxi, according to the Kent city ordinance definition, then they’d get a ticket for operating a taxi service without a license,” he said.
If legally operated, Prusha said he and his department are in full support of Enos and anyone else with intentions of providing safe transportation.
“Any time someone is intoxicated and they find someone else to drive, we’re all for that,” Prusha said.
Enos said he’s received positive feedback from his questions posed to friends, patrons and bar employees. But whether potential customers will be willing pay $25 — when cheaper taxicab options are often available — and sign a waiver to allow Enos drive their vehicle with them in it remains to be seen.
The competition, Go2Go Taxi/Shuttle Service, welcomes the addition of Enos’ service to the downtown transportation market, owner Doron Kutash said.
“It’s all a positive,” Kutash said. “I look at it as, activity breeds activity. In my opinion, we want to build Kent, and we want to build the surrounding communities.”
Kutash said his company has explored the designated driver service and even had a basic flyer design to show, but has no plans to start the venture any time in the near future.
If Speedy DD succeeds, however, that may change.
“If a designated driver program is in place, and it’s not us, that’s fine. We’ll adjust,” Kutash said. “If it becomes a competitive thing, then yeah, we’ll go into that industry.”
Above all, the three agreed that they are collectively out to make transportation in Kent safer for all citizens, provided all methods abide by the law.
But how Speedy DD’s entrance into the market affects it remains to be seen.