I don't know... this credits Uber, and Uber is bad.
Ride-hailing apps may help to curb drunk driving
41–50 of 383 posts
Re: Ride-hailing apps may help to curb drunk driving
#42Perhaps that should be phrased "the availability of drivers using a ride sharing platform has helped reduce drunk driving accidents." If Uber doesn't accept drivers as employees and isn't responsible for their actions, it shouldn't be credited with their collective contributions to a safer society.
Bitter/hating much? I know Uber is not liked, but the fact that they have done a great job at disturbing the market in a great way. (Lyft as well, but they are still a minority player) Having have to deal with NYC cabs often, when they will lock the doors and ask where you are going before letting you in, Uber is a great improvement overall. Also, a NYC taxi medallion would cost 500k to almost 750k (that's like a mor…
Have you really had that experience in NYC? I've lived in Brooklyn for 10 years and have only once had a cab refuse to drive me home.
Re: Ride-hailing apps may help to curb drunk driving
#43Proving another benefit of subsidized public transportation. In Uber's case, low-cost rides subsidized by its investors.
Re: Ride-hailing apps may help to curb drunk driving
#44Hmm, the study [0] credits over all reduction of drunk driving accidents to Uber. If ride sharing is the source of reduction, shouldn't ride sharing in general be credited? Maybe Uber was the only ride-share available during the study though since it's data from 1989-2013. "A recent increase in the ease and availability of alternative rides for intoxicated passengers partially explains the steep decrease in alcohol-r…
> Fair enough, looks like lyft only came to NYC around 2014[1]. But does anyone know if the ride share prices in NYC from 2011 [2] to now has significantly changed?
You would have to look at how the ride sharing services came about in different cities around the world.
The two most popular ways to measure those effects in economics are differences-in-differences (basically a clinical trial -- you need some very similar placebo city to compare it to) or regression discontinuity design (you need a fairly immediate effect, so assuming people learn to use uber this is out of the question).
Re: Ride-hailing apps may help to curb drunk driving
#45The cited CUNY study: http://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=10...
Wow, this was treated pretty well wrt stats, almost like a clinical trial. The article makes it sound like just an anecdote.
Applied microeconomics is full of these sort of studies. It thrives on finding "natural experiments" to exploit and identify/measure an effect.
Re: Ride-hailing apps may help to curb drunk driving
#46Another bright light on the horizon: Self driving cars. I'm hugely optimistic that within the next 100 years, we could very possibly see deaths from drunk driving shrink to a small fraction of it's current value. It's a great thing when profit driven businesses also have positive side effects for everyone.
I'm curious when self-driving cars become common place how the law will react to it. It's my assumption that the law will still require a driver to be sober in the event that manual control is needed, though I suppose if the car is driving itself perfectly fine police would have no reasonable grounds to pull anyone over and discover they're drunk in the first place.
> though I suppose if the car is driving itself perfectly fine police would have no reasonable grounds to pull anyone over and discover they're drunk in the first place.
I can't speak for America, but here (Australia) I'd guess the vast majority of drunk driving tickets are from booze busses. I can't even remember the last time I saw somebody pulled over and breathalysed.
Re: Ride-hailing apps may help to curb drunk driving
#47Or conversely, the taxi medallion system is likely responsible for 24-35% of drunk driving incidents...
In Vancouver, If going out downtown, it's a 80$ cab ride each way atleast. Transit would take atleast an hour but good luck taking it back at 2am when service is very limited. I could drive after drinking and spend 30-40 minutes. There is no ride sharing allowed here yet. I usually don't go out if I don't have a designated driver as it's just not affordable or takes too long. Many friends, and I admit myself when you…
Without great public transportation, it seems rather unlikely for suburban folks to enjoy a lifestyle where you can drink downtown and safely get back home at a decent rate. Ridesharing might be cheaper for now, but I'm not sure what it will be like when the prices truly represent the market value; currently, most ridesharing companies seem to be operating at loss. The ultimate solution might come when autonomous driving becomes possible, I really can't see it another way.
BTW even with public transportation, if you're drunk enough to think it unsafe to drive, you're probably gonna want to use the restroom more often.
I've gone over this issue a LOT, and right now I'm planning to move to the city center and just take the hit of higher rent for now. Luckily, I am single so this is a lot more convenient than if you have a family with kids and stuff.
Re: Ride-hailing apps may help to curb drunk driving
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's some kind of bullshit. If "ride sharing" was the only causative factor then taxis would have addressed this already, given "ride sharing" is a euphemism for taxi.
Not really. If the marginal convenience and cheaper price of ride sharing firms led more drunk people to use them then it would be ride sharing that did it. Also, since there have always been taxis, it would have been a big coincidence to observe the statistical difference at the same time as the rise of ride sharing. Obviously, "ride sharing" is a bad description, but so what? The word "cab" is left over from horse…
Taxis and modern ride sharing services may appear to 'offer the same product,' but they do it in different ways. The accessibility of Uber and Lyft via smart phone apps put them worlds ahead.
Go back ten years. You need a taxi after leaving a social event. Your choice: bar, movie theater, wedding reception, whatever. Go stand outside in the wind/rain/snow/etc. on the corner of the intersection and hope that you aren't racially profiled and ignored by the driver and eventually someone will decide they want to pick you up... but for some strange reason they don't seem to turn on the meter and funny thing, when you arrive, the credit card machine is broken. This is the product that taxis have cultivated over decades of service.
Meanwhile, now, I sit inside protected from the elements, summon an Uber or Lyft on my phone quicker than it takes to call the taxi service (much less flag one down), and pay less than the taxi would have cost me. In my personal experience, I can get picked up by an Uber faster than I can even talk to a human being on the phone at a taxi dispatch.
You think this is the same service? It's not. Taxis are and have been a joke, and the evidence is in the walls they have built around themselves. The medallion system in New York as a prime example. What could be more absurd? What could be the logic, if not to fend off competition? Taxis have not offered the service that Uber and Lyft offer in decades, and even now that they are scrambling to roll out their own apps, they still fail to provide reliability. They have been playing by their own rules for so long, taxis completely lost sight of how to be a service industry.
Re: Ride-hailing apps may help to curb drunk driving
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with cabs is that the drivers aren't sure if they will get another ride, so they are less likely to service more remote areas.
Wasn't there an article here a few days ago that said Uber drivers were doing exactly the same thing?
Uber drivers don't get a choice. Some do and try and skirt that system, but it's more obvious and they get in more trouble.
Re: Ride-hailing apps may help to curb drunk driving
#50The study was originally published in January. This article is being published in April.
I subscribe to the Economist and I enjoy it, but I am cynical about why this is being published now, amidst significant negative publicity for Uber.