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This insurance may protect you even if you aren’t in your car. For example, if you were hit by an uninsured motorist while driving another person’s vehicle, walking across the street or riding your bike, the bodily injury portion of your insurance may help with your expenses in a covered incident.

Just one example. Insurance is strange. If a thief steals your bicycle from your car while you're in another state, your auto insurer will direct you to your homeowner's policy. Your homeowner's insurance will cover your bicycle. Uninsured motorist insurance often covers you in all situations.

When you get into a vehicle you personal insurance usually does not cover injuries sustained there as it is normally covered by the requires vehicle insurance.

It's often covered by Guest PIP.

When you get into a vehicle you personal insurance usually does not cover injuries sustained there as it is normally covered by the requires vehicle insurance.

Begging the question: how do you know this? Slug Lines and slugging in general have gone on for a long time with minimal incident. What sets Uber apart, in terms of risk, from traditional slugging?

Having just today learned about the phenom of peons earning a few bucks a day to break captchas, your idea doesn't strike me as all that absurd. Cough up a couple bucks to have someone on another continent drive your car for you - I can see that being a hit with frazzled commuters. Or hell, someone in the same city - this must be one of those shovel ready jobs I've heard them talk about so much lately.

Or how about paying someone in pocket change to just ride along so you can tool down the HOV lane? I'm stunned how empty the HOV lane is on I5 in Portland, OR, which is as theoretically 'Green' as burgs get, right? Perhaps PDX's mayor should encourage slugging. Don't know why that hasn't taken off everywhere, either.

Here in DC, we have Slug Lanes. It is informal, not run by any government which is why it actually works. Essentially, commuters wishing to use an HOV lane pick 2 people waiting at bus stops or parking lots so they can. So as a result, you do actually get cars off the roads. Of course, if the government managed it, it wouldn't work.

These people would really have a cow in Northern Virginia. Slugging, or waiting for strangers to pick you up to take you to work, has been going on here since the early 1970's!

Yes, it's odd, and you do exactly what your mother told you not to do: talk to strangers and get in their car. But there have been no serious crimes against "slugs" reported during the entire time.

It just feels strange the first time you do it, and it never completely feels right!

I95/I395 HOV is still 3 required. I take it every single day to and from work in a car pool. Well actually as a slug[1] with unknown random drivers but it is still at least 3 people in the car. These HOV lanes are fully ultilized and many days there are backups just like the regular lanes. There are many cheaters, more in the afternoon than in the morning and as it gets darker earlier in the evening as winter approaches the number of cheaters goes up as well. Without the HOV lanes, my commute would go from 25 minutes in I95/I395 to about 60-90 minutes. Police are scouting at random places, mostly the exits and entrances.
Here is a link to the traffic cameras to see the live action in these HOV lanes on I95/I395, they are the purple ones that go to the bottom of the map, not much to see at night though. The HOV lanes are the two lanes in the middle of the highway and go south out of DC in the afternoon and north in the morning. The HOV enforced hours are 3:30pm-6:00pm and 6:00am-9:00am weekdays, it is open to everyone except trucks on the other hours.

[1] Slugging is an interesting concept and Ive been doing it every day for years, this site can explain it better than I can. I basically get a ride to and from a park-n-ride to downtown DC and usually within a block or two of my office for free everyday and ride along in the HOV lanes, hitchhiking for "suits". Yeah, I thought it was odd before I tried it as well.

You at least have at least 3 non-work days. Although it's probably better for you to exercise every other day, my med school teacher said that exercising three days straight is better than no exercise during the week at all. So find the discipline to do that.

Secondly, find out how to commute smarter. Those 3 hours involve only you behind the wheel, then it's going to take a toll on you -- mentally and physically. Be creative on how to commute. For example, in the DC metro area, there's a growing phenomenon called slug lines, which are "unofficial meeting places where commuters catch free rides with drivers who need additonal riders to use high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes." If you don't have to drive, you can at least use that time for personal enrichment, like reading the paper, book, or listening to music or audiobooks, or you can do some work if you have a laptop, etc. That's 3 hours that you can have to yourself. If you buy an Archos AV340 and have a ReplayTV (or a networked TiVo) at home, you can even catch up on your favorite shows during the commute -- it makes the workday more bearable.

Please do not group all hybrid drivers into a group called responsible.

I live in northern VA. We have multiple methods of getting to work in DC. Seperate HOV lanes (high occupancy vehicle), county and city buses, the metro, private charter buses, van pools, the rail system, and slugging[1] (yes, riding with strangers to meet the requirements of HOV). The main reason people buy a hybrid is to take the HOV lanes as they are allowed to without having three people in the car. This is not the most "responsible" method as I stated, there are many other ways to get into the city without driving at all. These people just want to drive and take advantage of the HOV requirement. They would use much less gas using any one of the other methods or even a motorcycle.
I am kind of bitter because I have a non hybrid car that gets roughly 40-44MPG (real world equal to the average hybrid) and I still do not drive to DC, I slug or take the bus.

News broadcasts around here report that hybrids have significantly higher sales percentages around areas that allow them to travel on HOV lanes. The sales are not linked to environmental issues, traffic issues, or price of gas. Only to take the HOV lanes and get to work faster.

[1] It seems odd for some to ride with a stranger but thousands of people get to to and from work this way daily and have for years in the DC area. There are specific park and ride lots built to support this concept by the local counties and some have over 1000 spaces that are filled by 7:30 in the morning. Even the VA department of transportation recognizes and encourages the slugging system by building the parking lots with seperate car staging areas and even putting up electonic signs to direct drivers to the correct waiting lines. Get off the better then thou kick and accept the fact that this concept does work and it does happen regardless of how strange or weird you may think it is.

Please do not group all hybrid drivers into a group called responsible.

I live in northern VA. We have multiple methods of getting to work in DC. Seperate HOV lanes (high occupancy vehicle), county and city buses, the metro, private charter buses, van pools, the rail system, and slugging[1] (yes, riding with strangers to meet the requirements of HOV). The main reason people buy a hybrid is to take the HOV lanes as they are allowed to without having three people in the car. This is not the most "responsible" method as I stated, there are many other ways to get into the city without driving at all. These people just want to drive and take advantage of the HOV requirement. They would use much less gas using any one of the other methods or even a motorcycle.
I am kind of bitter because I have a non hybrid car that gets roughly 40-44MPG (real world equal to the average hybrid) and I still do not drive to DC, I slug or take the bus.

News broadcasts around here report that hybrids have significantly higher sales percentages around areas that allow them to travel on HOV lanes. The sales are not linked to environmental issues, traffic issues, or price of gas. Only to take the HOV lanes and get to work faster.

[1] It seems odd for some to ride with a stranger but thousands of people get to to and from work this way daily and have for years in the DC area. There are specific park and ride lots built to support this concept by the local counties and some have over 1000 spaces that are filled by 7:30 in the morning. Even the VA department of transportation recognizes and encourages the slugging system by building the parking lots with seperate car staging areas and even putting up electonic signs to direct drivers to the correct waiting lines. Get off the better then thou kick and accept the fact that this concept does work and it does happen regardless of how strange or weird you may think it is.

A lot of other replies in this thread assume that the parent poster was installing Mandrake while driving. If so, he probably should be concentrating more on the road. Before anyone else chimes in with condemnation, consider this--maybe the guy carpools. Maybe he commutes in with his wife. Maybe he is a slug. In other words, maybe he was a passenger. Slashdotters seem generally pro-environment--why is it so hard to conceive of a vehicle that actually has more than one occupant?

How about "dynamic ride sharing" (AKA Slugging) like in northern VA? I get to and from work using this method EVERY DAY. Slugging in brief is using specific park and ride lots where random people need a ride and random people wanting to pick up riders to use the HOV lanes meet. You wait your turn in line and get in a car. It is a very established system that has been running and morphing for years. We are having the same issues here though as the local government bodies are trying to make it a lane for the rich also or what they call "Hot Lanes", this does not really make sense though as the lanes are already well used by cars with the required 3 in their cars. For those that are not keen on riding with or picking up strangers, there are buses that pick up and drop off in most of the same park and rid lots, the VRE train system, and the DC Metro system. There really is no excuse for those that complain about the traffic on the I95/I395 regular lanes (non-HOV) as they sit in thier cars by themselves with so many other options available.

Normally this is done for free.

In Washington DC the community slugs their way into the HOV lanes.

In a nutshell, folks driving alone on common routes who want to drive in the HOV lane pick up (car-less) complete strangers who also travel the same route. The driver gets to work more quickly. The passenger gets a free ride. The community gets less pollution and less traffic. Everybody wins.

If only Seattle would pick up on the trend! T'would solve their problems without any additional govenrment intervention whatsoever... without destroying the benefit of the HOV lanes.

The DC Metro area has what are known as "slug lines" which is sorta a gnutella-like mass transit.

A hasty google search brings these few links up. (Note: I didn't proofread these. I don't know which to recommend since I no longer live in the area and don't even commute anymore.)
www.slug-line.com
www.slug-lines.com
www.commuterpage.com
www.va-links.com
www.commutersregiste r.c om

(boy, what's it say when you start describing real-world things in terms of internet fads?)