Asleep at the wheel: Japanese rental cars used for anything but driving www.theguardian.com

Surveys shed light on unusual habits of drivers who return cars with zero mileage on clockAsleep at the wheel: Japanese rental cars used for anything but drivingCar rental companies in Japan have figured out why some customers are returning their vehicles with barely a mile on the clock.
Rather than travel from from A to B, as many as one in eight “drivers” are using their rental cars to grab forty winks, catch up on work or even brush up their language skills, according to industry surveys.
The unusual habits came to light after Orix Auto found a number of its 230,000 registered users were not driving their rented vehicles, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported.
Other rental firms noticed similar anomalies in their customers’ mileage records and approached them hoping to get to the bottom of the mystery.
“Cars can be used as a private space,” a Docomo official told the Asahi.