Dear SafeRide drivers,

We’ve all needed you at some point. Maybe I was studying late and it was dark and freezing out. Maybe I was trying to get to where the night’s festivities were. Maybe I was just being lazy. No matter the case, I called your hotline and was put on hold for a good 15 minutes; then a dispatcher told me I’d have to wait another 45 minutes for a car to pick me up.

I and many others just found out the SafeRide program won’t be receiving last year’s proposed $45,000 appropriation from the administration’s surplus. I know that while this doesn’t mean fewer operating cars on any given night, it means SafeRide won’t have the money to make the improvements it desperately needs, including expanding hours and cutting wait times. I won’t blame that on you, drivers. SafeRide is, on its most busy nights, unavailable to many. I was recently on hold for 30 minutes before I decided to take the shuttle. But the shuttle didn’t come and I had to trek home, pepper spray in hand.

I’ll even try not to fault you for being unreliable some nights. I’ve had a SafeRide leave because I got out to the Sargent parking lot one minute too late. (A phone call would have been nice.)

What I will fault you on, however, is your driving. We’ve all seen the SafeRide cars pushing 60 mph down Sheridan Road. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen you drivers on your cell phones. OK, maybe you were talking to the dispatcher, but you still weren’t “riding safe.”

One of you hit my friend not too long ago. She was leaving Norris late one night, walking home, when a speeding SafeRide car hit her. She wasn’t injured, just stunned. The driver, horrified, might have mumbled a “sorry” through the window but my friend was too bleary-eyed to process what was going on.

What happened, guys? Yes, I know you have better things to do at midnight than haul my ass home from the library. I know you have to deal with a lot of drunk students on the verge of puking. But you’re getting paid good money (your $10-11 an hour trumps my $8 an hour at Starbucks) and, therefore, you should be providing at the very least a safe driving service.

You all must have been the cream of the driving crop, so I wondered what qualifications you have. You had to fill out a pretty rigorous application, pass a university background check, complete an interview and then get driver certification. Then you sit in the passenger’s seat during three shifts to observe another SafeRide driver. A lot of hoops to jump through to get a campus job, I’ll admit.

But how is your driving evaluated? At Starbucks we used to have “secret shoppers” come in and make sure the drinks we made were up to standard. Would a similar system make you follow driving laws and adhere to common courtesy? SafeRide should have a mechanism in place for quality control. If so, I’ll be the first to volunteer.

Thank you for getting us to our destinations when it’s cold and dark outside, but please remember it’s called SafeRide rather than Not-so-SafeRide.