Alcohol-Related Car Accidents Declined In New York After Introduction of Uber, Analysis Finds (economist.com)

According to a new paper from Jessica Lynn Peck of the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, ride-hailing services may have helped reduce alcohol-related traffic accidents by 25-30% in New York City. The report specifically focuses on Uber, which was first introduced in the city in May 2011, and looks at how the ride-hailing service has impacted New York City. The Economist notes in its report that Uber is "largely banned outside of New York City." From the report: To control for factors unrelated to Uber's launch such as adverse weather conditions, Ms Peck compares accident rates in each of New York's five boroughs to those in the counties where Uber was not present, picking those that had the most similar population density and pre-2011 drunk-driving rate. The four boroughs which were quick to adopt Uber -- Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx-- all saw decreases in alcohol-related car crashes relative to their controls. By contrast, Staten Island, where Uber caught on more slowly, saw no such decrease.

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Re:Supply and Demand

[rtb61]

Either that or Uber just happened to coincide with a general switch from alchohol as the intoxicant of choice to marijuana. So it switch from drivers driving to fast, to drivers driving to slow (those slow drivers not being in accidents so much as triggering them, when they set off a alchohol fuelled driver). It would be interesting to see how stoned drivers perform on a racetrack with very safe vehicles of course, how fast could they actually go before panicking and giving up.