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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.
Look, half the reason people come to NYC is the fact that you don't drive - you take cabs or the subways. I know drunkards that moved here JUST for the ability to get drunk at any time of day or night and get home without driving.
I could see Uber cutting down alcohol related driving accidents in any other part of the world - even in Queens or Brooklyn (as there are places far from subways that cabs don't visit).
But if you are drunk and driving in MANHATTAN, you should be put in prison for being stupid, rather than for DWI.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Then all those cars on the roads are from where exactly?
That aside, give people an even easier way not to drive, especially when drunk, and surprise, drunk driving goes down.
Whodathunkit?
There's not been any shortage of cabs in NYC and people weren't reluctant to pay for it.
I take it you haven't walked within ten meters of a cab in the last, say, 40 years, I guess? Cabbies have Microsoft marketroid levels of integrity.
It's either a coincidence, or a bogus finding.
You mean, an unbiased story slipping through the anti-Uber organized shit flinging fest we have in the media recently?
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Every story on this site is about Uber, Amazon, and Facebook. Who the fuck cares? More emDrive news please. I need to get off this rock stuck in a gravity well.
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.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
It's possible the app itself makes it easier to hail a cab instead. Instead of calling, they just use an app and they don't need to use cash.
Pairing the app with taxis could have the same result.
... how did taxi companies drop the ball on this one?
Ever since it came to my town, I"ve really hardly ever driving after or while drinking.
it is so convenient, I don't have to worry about parking, etc....and I can't get caught for a DWI, which with the unreasonably lowered BAC levels (.08 now I believe)....you can get popped as a grown man just having 2-3 glasses of wine with a meal out.
I live in New Orleans...and I know many will be appalled, but it isn't that big a deal here to drink and drive, it isn't as frowned upon here and other places in the south as it appears to be up in the NE and way out west.
But with uber, it is so convent and now economical, it just isn't worth any of the risk.
My only worry is, that I"m losing my practice and skill at driving after a few (the only time I actually bother looking at and trying to go the speed limit)...but I"ll trade that off for only a few $ and an app button push away and able to party all night and not have to worry if I"ve had too much or not.
I can't imagine that I'm alone in the least bit on this....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
This article was brought to you by your friends at Uber.
Here in Texas, we make up for all those coastal elite snowflakes who think there's something wrong with drinking and driving.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The title is self-contradictory. When a crash is alcohol-related, it isn't accidental, it's criminally negligent.
Even the NYPD agrees that "accident" means "there's no criminality...that's why they call it an accident." But when alcohol is involved, there's criminality and therefore cannot logically be a true accident.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
I'll bet you don't own a TV, either...
It's possible the app itself makes it easier to hail a cab instead. Instead of calling, they just use an app and they don't need to use cash.
Actually, over the last year or two I've taken cab rides here in Southern California, I've had no problem paying for my cab with a credit card. Can't speak for NYC, but it's a good point.
One excuse for driving instead of taking a cab would be that you don't have to worry about having enough cash for the ride home. I know that sometimes became an issue back in my drinking days.
>There's not been any shortage of cabs in NYC
That depends heavily on the time of day and where in NYC you happen to be.
I tried their "mytaxi" app and it is shite beyond belief. I couldn't even pay with it. It couldn't connect.
The Lyft/Uber experience is so much better.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
The app is nice, but the other really big thing that Uber brings to the table is surge pricing. A surge really does what it is designed to do: gets many more drivers out on the road to match the large demand with more supply. Taxis don't have anything like that. If there aren't enough taxis, you just have to wait.
It would be interesting to see how stoned drivers perform on a racetrack with very safe vehicles of course...
As interesting as this is.
I think your initial premise is wrong. People switching from alcohol to marijuana is not the cause of this slowdown in drunk driving.
In my area for instance, which is a suburb outside of San Francisco, a bartender told me that taxis were too difficult to get ten years ago, that's why many of his customers didn't use them. He'd call one for a patron, and it wouldn't even show up. And when he'd get off work, he'd call a taxi for himself and the operator would tell him that it was going to take 45 minutes to get there to pick him up.
Now it just takes 2 to 10 minutes to get an Uber/Lyft. That's the crucial difference because the number of people leaving his establishment drunk hasn't really changed in the past ten years.
And no, you don't have to believe me, I am an Uber driver so I could be very biased. And if you live an Uber/Lyft rich area, I only ask that you ask longtime bartenders to see what they can tell you about this question. I suspect that they'll tell you the same thing that the bartender I met said.
Think of how much unemployment Uber can cause if it eliminates 30% of drunk driving. Doctors, emergency rooms, ambulances, morticians, courts and even police forces can lay off workers due to less drunk driving. Insurance companies make huge sums raping the wallets of convicted drunk drivers and God only knows how many bricks in the court house were paid for by drunk drivers. Can society survive this kind of progress? Next they will find a way to beat down heroin addiction. Imagine the countless jobs created by junkies collapsing dying or requiring rehab or paying lawyers, courts and probation fees we will lose. Can we afford this sort of thing. Maybe the morticians should sue to halt such progress as it clearly eliminates many jobs in their profession. What next? Maybe they will find a way to close all out prisons?
I doubt Uber can be the cause of the decline, but I also doubt that marijuana use is the cause also. New York State only started to allow medical marijuana early last year, and only if it's in extracts or edible.
http://extract.suntimes.com/in...
I wouldn't think the number of people who started using medical marijuana would have an effect on the number of drunk drivers.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
So what they're saying is that if you introduce a workaround to bypass government anti-competitive restrictions on the supply of something, people will be able to purchase more of it.
What a shocking result....
Or maybe they're saying that if drunks can take advantage of people who have been duped (or have fooled themselves) into providing a service at starvation wages, they will do it. That's shocking as well.
Uber may be a crappy company but the concept is sound. Having and easy, cheep, reliable way to call a ride in the city makes it a lot less likely that someone is going to drive to someplace they might want to drink (or to someplace where parking is difficult). I visited Montreal where uber operates illegally (last i checked) and they had a legal, app summoned, taxi service. Far better than any taxi I had taken in the city before, very reasonably priced and very convenient. It might have been more expensive than uber but it served the purpose well.
Old school taxis suck... ride share services seem like they might be kind of a stopgap but ultimately many cities need something like uber as a part of their transit solution. In the meantime, I try my best to only use Lyft.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
It's a car ride on "public" transportation. I have zero fucks to give about the driver's integrity. I care about getting from A to B quickly and the driver's driving ability and safety record.
Like, say, the driver lying up front to you how long the trip is and how long will it cost? Or the price suddenly rising by a factor of three the moment you arrive at the destination? Or them always "not having the change"?
Uber fixes all of this. Their execs might be strangling fluffy bunnies in all of their free time for all I care, if they can get us rid of the vermin that current cab mafia are, they're still good.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
I also think slashdot does not have a sense of humour. I of course still think it would be hilarious watching a bunch of stoned drivers trying to race around a race track in fairly safe cars, the facial expressions trying to make their way around the track at speed would be really humorous.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Uber may be a crappy company but the concept is sound. Having and easy, cheep, reliable way to call a ride in the city makes it a lot less likely that someone is going to drive to someplace they might want to drink (or to someplace where parking is difficult).
Please explain how it's notably easier thank hitting the dial button, type "taxi" (if even that much), hit dial again, and then tell someone on the other end where you are...
Heck, in the past, lift phone, hit a single button, wait 5-8 seconds, hang up, have taxi ready and waiting outside in ca 5 minutes.
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.
I have done this. I was in a Mercedes Benz E55 AMG. I had amazing lap times. In fact, the owner of the track told me that he had never had a car that was street legal drive that fast on his track before. He took me aside and showed me his collection of race M3s.
I lapped every Porsche on the track. I suspect they were "noobs" (originally newbs).
There was a Z06 there. It could almost keep up with me in the curves and there was Viper which could almost keep up with me in the straights. There were only two cars that could pass me that day but they never did. One guy spun out on the curve behind the curve that I was in. I was disappointed for him. The other one was a race-modified BMW M3. It would have destroyed me but broke down before it could pass me.
I was doing all this while having the air conditioner on, rocking out to some seriously aggressive music, and smoking a bowl.
Some people should not do anything serious while stoned while others are able to concentrate more clearly while stoned.
TL;DR: People are all different.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
A little alcohol to help me drive assertively, and a little pot to get me in the groove: I wouldn't need a soundtrack, the roar of the engines would be enough. Man that sounds like fun. Moderation, of course, except for speed, of course.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Me I prefer a nice stroll through pleasant burbs, views down leafy streets, listening to tunes, I could not imagine racing in anything, no way, no how.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Yeah I guess I missed the humor in your post. After all, it was modded +4 Interesting instead of +5 Funny :-)
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
And before this the pro-cannabis party were claiming the increased usage of pot was responsible. Everyone just trying to grab the credit because irrational statements keep pulling in the readers.