On August 20, 1997 Keys Please® opened for business in Calgary. Dave Dick, President of The Driving Alternative Inc., started the company after having run a large local courier trucking company. Already familiar with how dispatching worked, Dick thought the idea of driving people and their vehicles home after a night of drinking was a great idea. In the beginning Dick and his small crew of people worked tirelessly to get this venture up and running. Today they have an extremely large fleet of vehicles, full operations department, marketing personnel and administration staff to run the day to day business.
After The Driving Alternative Inc. researched the Calgary market, results indicated that the main reason people drink and drive was because they wanted their vehicle with them (so they could carry on the next day). Ginger Greenwood, General Manager says, “People want their independence. They don’t want to rely on other people. They need to take their kids to school, their spouse to work or they have to get to work themselves.”
Both Dick and Greenwood have a passion for this business. Greenwood says, “When people use Keys Please® the quality of life increases and lives lost due to impaired driving is reduced.” In 2014, The Driving Alternative Inc. re-branded Keys Please®. This was an opportunity for customers to book from the Keys Please® (Free) App for not only designated driving, but the option where they would drive people in their vehicle after having day surgery, eye surgery or dental procedure.
After the launch of daytime designated driving, Keys Please® started receiving calls requesting they take customers to and from locations assisting them when they did not have a vehicle. Keys Please® approached the City of Calgary Livery to find out what they would have to do to enable them to perform this function. Keys Please® received an exemption from the City of Calgary Livery in July, 2015 allowing them to transport customers for personal assistance services.
Keys Please® is thrilled welcome the new bylaw that makes rideshare a legal option for the public. Keys Please® has attempted to do this on a number of occasions throughout the years. Through this time, thousands of Keys Please® clients have asked them to perform this exact service to which they have always had to respond, “Unfortunately we cannot do that as the Taxi Commission would shut us down,” says Greenwood.
Over the last five years, there have been 42,913 criminal convictions for impaired driving in Alberta (April 1, 2009 – March 31, 2014). From 2009 to 2013, 444 people were killed and 6,649 people were injured in alcohol-related collisions and in 2013 alone, 80 people were killed and 1,133 were injured. So there is no doubt that ride services like Keys Please® could end up saving lives.
In 2015 Keys Please® supplied service to approximately 90,000 people in Calgary. Now with a large number of customer requests to extend services into Airdrie, Okotoks and Chestermere, Keys Please® is excited to announce that effective February 19, 2016 Keys Please® provides designated driving services for those communities.
You can check them out or if you are headed out for a night on the town and want to use this service, please visit www.keysplease.net/contact-us/
