“Every night is a new adventure,” said senior Stewart Bailey during his Saturday night Safe Ride shift. Bailey has driven a Safe Ride van since last fall. - Mike Norton Staff Photographer

Safe Ride officials are looking to expand the program so it will be similar to the Texas A&M Carpool program, said Abby Stuart, ASG Chair of Safe Ride Committee.

Safe Ride provides rides for students through two components: Night Owl, which operates on Monday and Tuesdays from 10:30 p.m. to 1 a.m., and Safe Ride, which operates Wednesday through Saturday from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m., according to the Safe Ride website.

Safe Ride, which is only available to students, has some problems, Stuart said.

On Monday and Tuesday, a student can only be brought to a location on campus, and on weekends, students can only be brought to the address that is on his or her ISIS account, Stuart said.

The Safe Ride Committee is still in the early stages of the expansion, she said.

“Hopefully this semester we figure out how to do it,” she said.

The committee had an event at Sigma Chi last week to get ideas about what students want from the Safe Ride program. There will be another similar event in February and Stuart wants to have about 100 people attend, she said.

Every day, about 30 people in the United States die in motor vehicle crashes that involve an alcohol-impaired driver resulting in one death every 48 minutes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Texas A&M’s Carpool program is funded by students.  The program operates Thursday, Friday and Saturday using cars donated by Enterprise. A person does not have to be a student to get a ride, and he or she can be brought anywhere in the area, Stuart said.

A person can call to get a ride, but the Carpool program also has cars that make routes near the main bar area. Someone can get a ride home from there, said Victoria Acuff, Carpool public relations director.

The UA is not the only school using the Carpool program as a model. The Carpool committee has a director of expansion whose job description includes informing other school officials how to bring similar programs to their community.

Schools that have programs similar to Carpool include the University of Georgia, Texas State University, University of Missouri, Colorado State University, University of Arizona, Stephen F. Austin University, Western Michigan University and James Madison University, according the Carpool website.

The expansion process includes telling a school how the program started for the Aggies, and giving the school a copy of the computer program that they use, Acuff said.

The Carpool founder Jeff Schiefelbein received a DWI. While attending a required Mothers Against Drunk Driving Victim Impact panel, he heard the testimony of a mother that lost her daughter to a drunk driver. This emotional experience gave him the inspiration to create the Carpool program in 1999, Acuff said.