My youngest will be riding home with a friend for winter break. Public transportation is unacceptable.
Is 53.5 cents per mile plus tolls divided by all occupants of the car fair compensation? They will split driving duty.
I’d let him or her figure it out themselves. My kids both got rides and gave rides during college. My only input when they got a ride was to make sure they helped with costs. Not sure you need to be so specific with costs per mile, tolls.
When my kid got rides…everyone in the car chipped in an equal amount to fill the tank…and they all decided the tolls equally too.
I never had anything to do with it… it that’s what they say they did.
No cost per mile…
Are they all insured to drive the car this way? My kid’s car cannot be driven insured by another kid. My kid is not insured to drive his friends’ cars, I thought that was how young driver insurance worked.
I would expect a classmate to ask for less compensation than true value. That is why I am asking parents. I wouldn’t want my student to not have a car ride versus public transportation because we were too cheap.
@Sybylla My child is +21 and insured to drive any car.
They will probably aak smaller than the fair value you figured. I would ask mine to offer the fair value if she is a guest.
Insurance is purchased for the CAR not the driver, although the premiums are based on the price of the car and the experience of the primary driver and any other regular drivers in the household.
Most car insurance will cover a ‘guest’ driver who doesn’t live in the same household as the primary driver and drives the car fewer than 10-12 times a year. Some insurance companies allow you to exclude some drivers who live in your home. I excluded my kids because it would have cost $3000 each to put them on my car. They did not drive my car at all and if they had, and had an accident, my insurance would have been cancelled in a second because they were’t ‘guests’. Now they are on my car although they do not drive it, but it does give them some additional coverage when driving another car (for underinsured motorists, medical, etc) but it would be a subrogated position to the car owner’s insurance.
Many insurance cover insured to drive commercial rental cars. Some do cover insured to drive any car that is not regularly parked at the insured’s home address.
Therefore you can be doubly covered by your own and your friend’s insurance policy
AFAIK that age thing is 25, not 21+. But the car, is it your car in question?
Split gas and tolls. Any food is on your own dime. But would be nice to buy the car owner lunch or whatever if longer drive. Have dome this many times as both rider and driver… The “Ride Board” at UW was fantastic BITD. On LONG drive like UW to LA would also split cost of motel as needed.
I would let them figure out the money part themselves. My concerns would be with the “shared driving duty,” both in terms of insurance coverage and the possibility (in some parts of the country) that young drivers unaccustomed to winter driving might have to drive in winter weather conditions.
My philosophy: short trips -I am going there with or without you and I’m glad for the company. longer trips -I am going there anyway so if you fill the tank or give me some gas money, we’re good.
As a passenger, I use the same rules in reverse.
You might also ask whether any of the other people has a pet chicken.
I had a car for only one semester while I was in college. (My family didn’t need it that semester.) For Thanksgiving break, I asked whether anyone from our area needed a ride. It turned out that a girl from my dorm did. What I did not know is that she would be bringing her smelly, noisy pet chicken. Although the chicken was in a cage, that drive was a LONG five hours.
(How, you might ask, did she end up with a pet chicken? The same way my roommates and I ended up with pet mice and later, a pet rat. The animals were purchased by researchers for use in experiments, but they ended up not being used in that way, usually because their body weight was outside the desired range. The lab staff would give them away as pets. And the dorm staff looked the other way when it came to animals other than dogs.)
Please don’t try and calculate it by miles. That’s just… bizarre.
I had a car beginning with my first year at college and used to ride share all the time. I enjoy driving. We would split gas and tolls- approximately. No one kept track of exactly who was paying what.
If she’s 21+, let her figure it out herself. Really, people of my generation are used to splitting costs on things. No big deal.
We used to have a car loan and only the two people listed on the loan as joint guarantors were allowed to drive the car until the loan was paid off. It had nothing to do with insurance.
@romanigypsyeyes It’s not a bizarre way for my engineer brain to think.
I’m with others…just tell your kid he or she needs to contribute to the costs of the trip. Let the KID do the rest.
Even my engineer husband agrees that doing this by the mile is not a good plan.
I’m not criticizing the way your brain works. I’m saying that it’s bizarre to use that in the real world in this situation. It’s just not what young adults are going to do.
How long is the ride?