Uber May Be Reducing Drunk Driving
Paul Best writes at reason:
Just a few weeks ago, Pittsburgh resident Nate Good published a quick study that offered the first hard evidence that DUI rates may be decreasing in cities where Uber is popular. An analysis of Philadelphia's data showed an 11.1 percent decrease in the rate of DUIs since ridesharing services were made available, and an even more astonishing 18.5 percent decrease for people under 30.As everyone knows, however, correlation does not equal causation. Good's quick number-crunching was too simplistic to draw any overarching conclusions, but it did open the door for future studies. A recent, deeper analysis from Uber makes the case even stronger that ridesharing services may be responsible for a decline in DUIs.
From that Uber analysis:
Requests for rides come from Uber users at bars at a much higher rate than you might expect based on the number of bars there are in the city. The fraction of requests from users at bars are between three and five times greater than the total share of bars.
Who's stopping Uber? Oh, the cops, for one.
"My Uber got pulled over by the Denver police -- and then things got really weird"
I'm not sure why this would be surprising. Where I live, at least, it can be tough to get a cab during peak bar hours, so any additional car services on the street would seem to cut down on people driving to and from bars.
Kevin at July 22, 2014 7:26 AM
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