what is car pool

Carpooling is the sharing of car journeys so that more than one person travels in a car, and prevents the need for others to have to drive to a location. It is an arrangement among a group of automobile owners by which each owner in turn drives the others or their children to and from a designated place. Carpooling is a good way to use up the full seating capacity of a car, which would otherwise remain unused if it were just the driver using the car. Carpooling is also promoted by organizations that aim to reduce carbon footprint and encourage responsible car use. In the United States, carpooling represented 43.5% of all trips in 2009 and 10% of commute trips. The majority of carpool commutes are "fam-pools" with family members. Carpooling is also known as car sharing in British English and is promoted by a national UK charity, Carplus, whose mission is to promote responsible car use in order to alleviate financial, environmental, and social costs of motoring today, and encourage new approaches to car dependency in the UK. Carpooling is often facilitated by websites that connect drivers with passengers for one-off long-distance journeys with high fuel costs. In Europe, long-distance car-pooling has become increasingly popular over the past years, thanks to BlaBlaCar.