Need a Ride? Tap your iPhone

Soon you may no longer need to stick out your thumb to catch a ride. Instead, you may get one by tapping your fingers on your iPhone.

When the program is available, drivers who want to offer rides will first download the application, then record their preffered route, said Sean O’Sullivan, MD of Avego and Executive Chairman of Mapflow, Avego’s parent company, based in Dublin. “You put the iPhone on the dashboard, and records the entire trip and sends the route to our network,” he said. The system stores the route, adding it to it’s menu of paths and pick-up points and offering them and offering them autometically to interested riders.

Drivers must have an iPhone in order to use the service, but if passengers don’t, they still will be able to look for a ride in Avego’s website or call or send a text message, O’Sullival said. Drivers and riders can identify one another by photographs displayed on their iPhones, as well as by PINs that verify identities and authorize the transaction.

Avego will charge 30 cents a mile, he said, with 85% going to the driver to recover some of the commuting costs and 15% to the company. All payments will be handled by automated online accounting. It will take a while to establish the critical mass of drivers and passengers, O’Sullivan acknowledged. But he hopes that the chance to defray expenses will change the entrenched habits of many drivers who tresure their solitude.

“It will require behaviour changes on the part of drivers and riders,” he said.