Tokyo, Japan — Japanese car rental companies have learned something interesting about their customers – many people in Japan don‘t rent cars to drive somewhere, they rent because they‘re looking for a quiet, private space.

The Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbum says that in the summer of 2018, a car-sharing company called Orix Auto discovered that quite a few of its cars ―traveled no distance'' when they were rented. The people at Orix couldn‘t explain it. ―The only thing we can say is that…a number of people rent cars without driving them,‖ they said.

Other car sharing and rental companies soon noticed the same thing. One car rental company learned that one out of every eight customers said they didn‘t rent their cars for driving.

The companies were curious. If customers weren‘t renting cars to drive them, then why were they renting? They began to ask their customers some questions to learn more about what was going on.

It turned out that customers were using the cars in many unexpected ways.

Besides driving, the most common use for rental cars was napping. It‘s likely that many Japanese people could use a nap. The Guardian newspaper points out that Japanese people report sleeping about 45 minutes less each day than the worldwide average. In one group of Japanese adults who were questioned, nearly 93% said they did not get enough sleep.

Disponível em: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/15/asleep-at-wheel-japanese-rental-cars-used-anything-butdriving. Adapted. Acesso em: ago., 2019.

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