How can you not notice that you are in the wrong car? Different people have different stuff lying around in their cars. Stickers, scratches, dents, dirt. Cars smell differently.
You'll change your mind about it not being your car the first time you get into one, it takes off, then you're like "sniff...sniff...ohgodwhatzatsmell", suddenly realizing some drunk person puked (or worse) in the back seat area.
It also sucks trying to get things back that you forget in a shared car. I know a driver who let her wallet slip down the side of the passenger seat. After a bunch of failed attempts to tell her the location of the vehicle so she could check herself, the company went to look, a week later, but they didn't check the side of the passenger seat. Then the car got shipped 500 miles away for service. Six months later she received a call that they'd found her wallet, but of course everything had been replaced by then. And even then it was a hassle to get it shipped and picked up.
They can tell by which way you enter the car. This is problematic since women commonly put their purse in the passenger seat sometimes via the passenger door.
I understand your confusion. Just, you know, take it out of the car when you get out. I've had people tell me "Geez, your car is so clean". It's not. But I don't have trash, empty bottles, old coffee cups, fast food bags, etc because, I take it out when I leave my car.
I definitely don't have a lot of stuff lying around in my cabin. At the moment the only things visible in the cabinet are an electronic parking disc and a 12V two-port USB charger. If I encountered a clean car with the same interior colours as mine, I might not immediately notice it.
Why would I want to use the same car as other people? It will be dirty, because people will do all sorts of things in there,and I would feel very uncomfortable.
The reason that it is wrong to take my car, even if I don’t notice, are multiple:
- You are still depriving me of the possibility of using my own car, even if it happened to be the case that I didn’t need it. I could have come home early. I could have told some friend or family to pick up my car so that they could use it. I could have had an appointment that someone would come by to service my car while I was absent. All of this is made impossible if someone takes my car.
- It still causes wear and tear on my car if you use it.
- You could get into an accident, which could hurt you and damage my car.
- I don’t want random strangers to sit their butts in my car.
but the owner doesn't know that. he has to assume you left a bomb under the passenger's seat, left illicit substances in hard to get spots and put a potato in the exhaust.
For many people, a car ends up storing a good variety of things they would need for very few trips, but only on said trips. e.g., if you only need your gym clothes on days when you stop by the gym on the way home from work, you don't need to have planned that stop before leaving for work in the morning if you keep a set of gym clothes in the car.
It's like having a really, really big purse or backpack.
Additionally, if I spill something in my car, oh well, maybe I'll steam clean the upholstery after a few months of such spills, but if I spill something in a shared vehicle, that seems worse to me--letting the mess build up for a few months impinges on others.
reply