Based on personal experiences this isn't surprising. When I was in college in a small town in the late 00's, many friends and acquaintances would drive across town after heavy drinking. 10-15 minutes, straight roads, little traffic. Other than not going out, or not getting home, you didn't have many options. It was a hour long walk or a $20-40 cab ride, if you could get one.<p>I was recently back in town for a wedding and our uber to the hotel from the venue (about the same distance) was $9.<p>Once came to town (now on the east coast) I instantly noticed many friends who used to drive would take an uber. It's cheap, it's easy to call one from a crowded/loud place, you know how much it will cost, they don't use cash, they know where you are, and you don't have to give directions. For someone intoxicated (or anyone really), these are game changers.<p>It's the difference between "who's going to drive?" and "who's calling an uber?"<p>Company politics aside, the accessibility of ride-sharing services introduces numerous real safety benefits on top of the obvious convenience.
Let's file this one under "duh"<p>It's not ride-hailing apps themselves. Has nothing to do with the fact that it's someone else's car or that you use an app instead of a phone number to order it.<p>It's the fact that you can get home now for $10 only waiting 5 minutes from the time you decided you want to leave.... compared to paying $60 and waiting an hour.
Another study from July 2016 said that Uber doesn't save many drunk driving accidents although the study referenced in the Economist only focused on NYC, whereas the study from 2016 was focused on multiple metropolitan areas.<p>[1]: <a href="http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/07/22/aje.kww062" rel="nofollow">http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/07/22/aje.k...</a>
Hmm, 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.<p>"A recent increase in the ease and availability of alternative rides for intoxicated passengers partially explains the steep decrease in alcohol-related collisions in New York City since 2011.I examine the specific case of
Uber’s car service launch in New York Cityin May 2011,
a unique example of a sudden increase in cab availability for intoxicated passengers.7This study draws on a dataset of all New York State alcohol-related collisions maintained by the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles from 1989 through 2013. My inference is based on the variation in Uber access across New York State counties over time and the careful choice of New York State counties that provide an appropriate control group for New York City’s drunk-
driving behavior"<p>Edit:<p>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? I vaguely remember a lot of people using it initially because of dirt cheap prices during the first few month of introduction but I don't trust my memory over facts if someone has some.<p>-----------<p>[0]<a href="http://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1012&amp;context=gc_econ_wp" rel="nofollow">http://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=10...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyft#History" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyft#History</a><p>[2] <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2011/04/06/i-just-rode-in-an-uber-car-in-new-york-city-and-you-can-too/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2011/04/06/i-just-rode-in-an-uber-car...</a>
I've wondered if cell phones have led to fewer altercations on subways as people spend more time focused on them, giving them less reason or chance to argue and fight with others.
Another 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.
The study was originally published in January. This article is being published in April.<p>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.
Perhaps that should be phrased "the availability of drivers using a ride sharing platform has helped reduce drunk driving accidents."<p>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.
If society really cared about drunk driving, there would be a free bus outside of every bar at bar close. We can do it for kids going to school, we can do it for adults going home.<p>But they don't care, they just want the money and power (unconstitutional DUI check points) involved in the DUI process.
I observe this is true with my 21 year old son who is in college. After a few drinks and dancing downtown, they all grab an Uber back home, they don't even consider driving. Now it is a small town, but you can still pick up an Uber at 2 am for a 5 dollar ride home. Awesome!
At least in London people are saying these apps are adding to road traffic and congestion, so the extra pollution (by other traffic being stuck also) might be harming health and causing early deaths to balance out any lives saved by stopping drunk drivers.
Uber's PR team would be rejoicing right now! It is great that technological advances have both positive and negative effects, and some times, the positive effects saves a ton of lives.
How is this even up for speculation? Why is there a need to quantify this with a study? <i>Of course</i> it curbs drunk driving. When you have better options, they're used.
* Without Uber or Lyft, Austin Experiences Skyrocketing DUI Rates - Foundation for Economic Education - Working for a free and prosperous world || <a href="https://fee.org/articles/without-uber-or-lyft-austin-experiences-skyrocketing-dui-rates/" rel="nofollow">https://fee.org/articles/without-uber-or-lyft-austin-experie...</a><p>> Before Uber came to town in 2014, Austin Police Department’s data showed that the city had an average of 525 drunk driving arrests per month. When these numbers were revisited a year after ridesharing came to Austin, drunk driving arrests had dropped by five percent. This trend continued the following year when the number of drunk driving arrests dropped by an additional 12 percent, bringing the average number of arrests to about 438 per month.<p>> In May of 2016, the same month Uber and Lyft made the decision to leave Austin, the monthly rate of drunk driving incidents was down to an average of 358. However, within the first few months of Uber and Lyft’s absence, the number of DUI arrests increased by 7.5 percent from the previous year. In the month of July alone, the city had 476 drunk driving arrests.
...but what about cars left on the parking lot by the drunk ppl? a lot of ppl might choose to drink&drive because they have to go back & get their cars again...<p>In South Korea they have 'substitute driver service' that drives customer's car (obviously, with customer in it) back to the customer's home.<p>I'm sure this can be done logistically (have a large bus carry around drivers, etc.)
A separate discussion that I'd like to have is – why do people drink so much, to the point of drunkenness? Why is this so common? Has this always been the case? Will this change?
No question ride-hailing has a net plus impact on reducing drunk driving. Though, it only works for the most fortunate of us (1) who live in urban areas (2).
Also, let's not forget that the most important driver to prevent drunk driving in the United States, is the severity (or extremism) of DUI laws. As a matter of fact, punishments for such infractions are so extreme that they achieve deterrence not by fear of punishment, but fear of unfair punishment.
I discovered Lyft after a friend of mine got a DWI.<p>His DWI was enough to get him to turn himself around, so he started using Lyft every time he went out drinking (years later, he's still steadfast about not driving when he's drinking), and he told me about Lyft, so now I use it all the time instead of relying on public transit or asking my friends to give me rides.
I'm a little late to the party, but I did a similar study on ridesharing's influence on DWI rates in Austin, TX before and after Uber and Lyft arrived and then exited the city, you can read it here: <a href="http://rpubs.com/ianwells/247645" rel="nofollow">http://rpubs.com/ianwells/247645</a>
So on the one hand technology allows for better taxi services resulting in fewer impaired-driving accidents, on the other hand, technology in the form or gadgets (entertainment systems, phones, GPS, etc., distract drivers as well as pedestrians resulting in more accidents on the not-under-the-influence side of things.<p>Still 24+% reduction is quite an nice result.
Note that Uber was not the only taxi reform in NYC. A quote from the paper:
"For my analysis, I use data from collisions that occurred from January 2007 through
July 2013. This period includes Uber’s entrance into the New York market in May 2011, allows
for a substantial pre-intervention period, and omits two potentially confounding entrances in the
New York City transportation market that could influence the alcohol-related collision rate. The
first entrance occurred in August 2013 as New York City introduced a new form of taxi
medallion to serve only the “outer boroughs” of Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island, and
northern Manhattan. These “boro” taxis were painted green rather than the typical yellow
medallion taxis, and banned from picking up in lower Manhattan, where most street-hail yellow
taxi rides originate."<p>Note also that Uber in NYC is operated by TLC-licensed drivers against whom it is very easy to file a complaint for dangerous driving, which is different from many other cities. I used NYC's lovely 311 app to file a complaint against just such a driver for shouting at me after he drove at me head-on in a 2-way bike lane. I expect he'll face a significant fine.
I seem to recall a Freakonomics chapter or podcast episode that discussed drunk driving vs. walking home drunk, and concluded that walking home drunk was even more dangerous than driving home drunk. Either choice is much worse than ride-sharing or cabbing or public transit, obviously.
?! Does this even require stating, let alone an entire article? What am I missing?<p>When Uber launched in my city, that's the first thing I began using it for. Lack of other options meant that I either had to wrap up drinking sessions early or risk DUI.
This seems pretty obvious. Is this considered newsworthy in part because the recently popular media refrain has been "Uber is bad"?<p>So now articles that point out the good that ride-hailing apps do are considered interesting?
Even 35% seems to low to me... I really thought/wish it was lower. Hopefully the reduction in bad driving practices start to reduce car insurance premiums as well.
Let me start off by saying that I don't approve of drunk driving. That said, the laws and how law enforcement treats drunk driving and how alcohol related accidents are reported tell a very distorted picture. After the MADD campaigns picked up sufficient steam and states began taking drunk driving more seriously, numbers dropped. But then they quit dropping. So many states lowered BAC limits from .10 to .08 in order to include more drivers in the impaired category even though there was no evidence to support it. With numbers stagnating again, you see another push for states to lower BAC levels to .05 even though there is zero evidence that this will lead to fewer accidents. All it does is create more criminals on the road which the police can then catch, fine, and profit from.<p>In the US, more people are arrested for drunk driving than for any other crime. Nearly 1% of all licensed drivers has received a DUI in the last 3 years.<p>As all of this was happening, the definition of what was alcohol related began to expand. Currently if any party in an accident is under the influence, even if they were not operating a vehicle, it's alcohol related. These inflated statistics then fuel calls for more oppressive crackdowns on drunk driving.<p>Again, I'm not advocating drunk driving but we have to focus on the right problems. Like, how do you keep the people who are the most dangerous off the road? While the police are out spending resources racking up arrests for people who had a couple of glasses of wine with their meal, a large percentage of accidents are caused by repeat offenders. Nationally, over 33% of people arrested for DUI get another DUI. And people with multiple DUIs are overrepresented in fatal car accidents (4.1x more likely).<p>Considering the fact that the most common BAC of someone who has been pulled over for suspicion of DUI is .16, continuously lowering the BAC threshold in order to snare more people in DUI convictions is not the answer. They're not the ones getting into accidents.<p>Believe me, if they changed the laws and made it a crime to serve more than two drinks to someone unless they could prove they had a ride home (other than them driving, of course), the alcohol companies would quickly come up with solutions.<p>Clearly the government's interests are not aligned with lowering drunk driving. Lowering drunk driving costs money (public transportation options, better city planning, etc). Arresting people for drunk driving generates revenue from fines. If they were successful in lowering drunk drivers on the road they would be decreasing their budgets.<p>Until you can align motives with profits, you'll never fix the problem. You'll just keep increasing the base of people who are considered criminals.