Pictured above is Brian, a driver that will get you home in a unique way–inside your vehicle. The idea is simple: you call a number (877-No DUI NC) and one of Zingo’s four drivers arrives on a bike that can fold up and fit inside your vehicle. The Zingo driver takes you home in your car, and rides away in the fold-up scooter.

Zingo is a company started in Atlanta four years ago, and has been spreading to various cities across the U.S. ever since. The drivers on scooters first arrived on the scene in Raleigh last August. They primarily serve the downtown area, but are capable of taking you to locations further away, including outside the beltline.

The folding scooter is small enough to fit in trunk space of most vehicles (it was originally designed to fit in boats and private aircraft), but the outfit in Raleigh also has a “chase car team”, where two drivers operate a Toyota Prius donated by Massey Toyota of Kinston. If the distance required is too far for a scooter, or weather is unsafe for scooter driving, the chase car team works by having one driver follow the other one driving your car. They both ride away, and your car sits in your driveway (and you minus a DUI or other unfortunate circumstance).

The officers of the RPD are well aware of bar locations, and checkpoints along various corridors of downtown Raleigh are not uncommon. It doesn’t take very many beverages to put you on the wrong side of the law when operating a motor vehicle, so please consider this or other methods of getting home if you don’t have a designated driver.

Rates are $10 for pickup, plus $3 per mile thereafter (and you don’t have to retrieve your car later).

Zingotriangle.com (warning: music)

877 NO DUI NC (663-8462)