Free Rides program<\/a> is ready to make sure people are able to get home safe from their favorite Fiesta events.\u00a0Azeza Salama, the executive director, said Fiesta is one of its busiest times each year.<\/p>\n\u201cFree Rides is an option,\u201d Salama said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s a better option than drinking and driving and going home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Salama lost her fianc\u00e9 in a drunk driving accident in 2016, and she sees the nonprofit as a way of making sure other people don\u2019t have to go through what she did.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The process is simple: you call the Free Rides program\u2019s phone line and someone will call an Uber for you. The phone number is (210) 281-1121.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The person on the other end of the line will ask you four questions: What\u2019s your name? Where are you? Where are you going? What\u2019s your phone number? What vehicle did you drive?<\/p>\n
From there, the nonprofit will call an Uber, and the rider will get a text message with information about the ride, like the driver\u2019s name, the car\u2019s make and model and the license plate. People who don\u2019t have the Uber app can still call for rides.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Salama emphasized that the program is for people who drove to an event and realized that they\u2019re too drunk to drive home. It\u2019s not just for anybody who wants a free ride. That\u2019s why, she said, they ask for information about what car people drove to the event.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole purpose of the Free Rides program is to eliminate another drunk driver on the road,\u201d Salama said. \u201cSo, we have to ensure that people that are getting the free Uber ride home are actually leaving a vehicle behind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Salama said Uber charges the nonprofit the full price for the rides. It relies only on private donations for funding. The nonprofit is holding a fundraiser Monday night at Hard Rock Cafe to raise money for the program.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fiesta is underway in San Antonio, and that means revelers who\u2019ve had a few drinks too many will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[82,84,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-256137","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-san-antonio","9":"tag-san-antonio-headlines","10":"tag-san-antonio-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}