Is a question everyone faces on Fridays out either without a designated driver, or they resigned themselves to join in on the festivities. Either way, the last round of drinks have come on the heels of the 10-minute warning. It's time to leave.
If you started your night in a rideshare, a bus, or a cab, then the choice is obvious. Lay that 90 cents a mile a down, and flee the bar in a gleeful stupor.
In the event of a carpool, the answer is less obvious. Normally, the designated driver gets the group and the car home without anyone waking up to a fresh batch of insurance claims, but not every night will be the same.
With ridesharing, everyone minus the car will make it back, leaving it to be set upon by feral parking tickets if it's near a meter.
Sleeping in the car is always an option. One that turns the inside of the vehicle to a portable bunker of body odor, cocktails, and an exhausted air freshener. Since parking tickets hunt indiscriminately, a full car will not save you from them.
The only way out without misdemeanors gnawing at your tires is to hope that a pair of people you know are willing to drive out at 2 A.M. to drive everyone and the car to the safety of their respective beds.
It's a shot in the dark at best. Most people aren't willing to bail people out of a situation that can be slept away, so kiss your naked windshield goodbye for the night, and pile into your favorite flavor of ride sharing.
Sometimes though, a favorite watering hole is just a few blocks away. On a casual evening, where the goal is to have money leftover for little things, walking home at the end of the night is a perfectly reasonable way to go.
There is a time to ride share though, and that's if upon walking out after closing time, you set off every breathalyzer within a three-mile radius. You didn't start out in a car, but now your legs have become as remote and cumbersome as a dump truck in an oil slick.
It's not invisible and the proximity to the place you stumbled out of will only provide so much protection from looming public intoxication fines. It's here that despite the negligible distance from bar to home, that no one will fault you for paying to put a stable set of wheels under your feet.
All of these same situations can be resolved via taxi drivers as well, who in recent years changed their business models to offer convenience similar to that of ride sharing apps.
The main difference is that while ride sharing companies employ what are essentially freelancers, taxi drivers are licensed professionals in accordance with their city and respective company. There is a premium that comes with professionalism, but the price per mile will stay the same no matter what.
Whichever way home you choose though, it's best to let someone else get you there- for a small fee of course.
