What You Might Not Be Involved In, Thanks To People Taking Uber
Mark J. Perry blogs at AEI about a new research paper, Ride-Sharing, Fatal Crashes, and Crime, by economists Sean Mulholland and Angela Dills. The essential bit:
We find that Uber's entry lowers the rate of DUIs and fatal accidents....1. Fatal Accident Rate. Specifically, we find that entry [of Uber] is associated with a 6% decline in the fatal accident rate. Fatal night-time crashes experience a slightly larger decline of 18%.
In both the weighted and unweighted estimations, we also discover a continued decline in the overall fatal crash rate and the rate of vehicular fatalities for the months following the introduction of Uber. For each additional year of operation, Uber's continued presence is associated with a 16.6% decline in vehicular fatalities.
2. DUIs and Crime. We find a large and robust decline in the arrest rate for DUIs. Depending upon specification, DUIs are 15 to 62% lower after the entry of Uber. The average annual rate of decline after the introduction of Uber is 51.3% per year for DUIs. For most specifications, we also observe declines in the arrest rates for non-aggravated assaults and disorderly conduct.
Hey, Austin, Texas...sorry, we'll just call bullshit on your claim that regulating Uber out of your market has the slightest thing to do with keeping the public safe.
(Austin is also keeping the public safe from the deadly tragedies that go on at children's lemonade stands, every day across America.)
Austin 1, Austin 2.
Crid at May 31, 2016 11:04 PM
Austin 3.
And remember, they were warned: Austin 4.
Yes, I love Twitter.
Crid at May 31, 2016 11:07 PM
Notice also the event described as a "fingerprinting fair."
A fingerprinting fair.
Makes you wanna pull Orwell corpse from his grave, or at least summon his immortal soul from a candlelight ceremony, just so you can set him down and tell him about this shit.
A fair. Balloons and lemonade and one of those bouncy castles for the kiddies.
Crid at May 31, 2016 11:24 PM
Austin legislators didn't like the chaos of having ride-sharing services, preferring the order of a tightly regulated market.
Marx preferred enforced order to free market chaos as well, even postulating that a dictatorship should be created to establish this order. This philosophy has resulted in tens of millions of deaths worldwide.
The free market is messy and chaotic. It always will be. But a free market is not for the faint of heart. It requires that the consumer be on his toes at all times. It requires an educated (and thinking) populace.
The US, in the past, has tried to find a happy medium in a semi-regulated marketplace; a marketplace where product and service providers are held to some safety standards, but mostly free to compete against each other.
However, we're moving toward a nanny state in which people do not have to think when purchasing a product. A fantasyland in which all products available in the marketplace are healthy, inexpensive, and, most important, "safe." College will be "safe." Workplaces will be "safe." Normal human friction will be eliminated and life will be "safe."
Despite seeing such utopian philosophies fail over and over again (Cuba, Romania, Russia, China, Venezuela, etc.), we point to the relatively few homogenous and semi-successful utopian societies (Denmark, Sweden, UK, etc.) and ignore the growing problems these societies are having due to the impracticality of utopian policies because we don't want reality to interfere with our fantasies.
And, no, I'm not suggesting that banning Uber will lead to a totalitarian takeover. I'm stating that an unrestricted urge to regulate by those entrusted with the power to legislate is what leads to totalitarian societies.
Jefferson believed that governments serve at the consent of the governed, the informed consent. We now have voters getting their news from late night comedy and talk shows. Television networks formed to be informative and educational now regularly feature fake "reality" shows about tattooing, baby beauty pageants, and dysfunctional fame whore families.
We have a national outrage about a gorilla being killed because a child was endangered by falling into its cage amid furious demands for the parents' heads on pikes. Because ... gorilla killed. Never mind the baby, a gorilla was killed. We've lost all perspective.
We're living Daniel Patrick Moynahan's nightmare scenario, we've defined deviancy down.
Conan the Grammarian at June 1, 2016 4:51 AM
So, per Crid's #4, a 23 percent in drunk driving crashes with Uber and Lyft in Austin. That's huge. Especially if you're hurt (or somebody you love is hurt or killed) or your car or property is damaged by a drunk driver. Or if you're the person who's a victim of some other crime but the cops can't get there because they're at a DUI scene. There are cascading negative effects from this.
Amy Alkon at June 1, 2016 5:26 AM
It's the California part of Texas. What do you expect?
Ben at June 1, 2016 6:10 AM
Don't think for a minute city council didn't know drunk driving (and therefor their income from DUI's) had gone down with ride sharing. The fact that they (and their revenue from them) will now go back up is a feature, not a bug.
momof4 at June 1, 2016 6:26 AM
Ah, the People's Republic of Austin. Can we build a fence around it? and make it YUGE?
I R A Darth Aggie at June 1, 2016 6:30 AM
The X games are this weekend in Austin.
Our city's leadership loves to trumpet the fact that Austin is a "world class city" and a city that symbolizes "innovation."
Meanwhile, they've commandeered things so that, when someone from an *actual* world-class city lands at Austin Bergstrom Airport and takes out their phone, they find that Lyft and Uber don't work 'round these parts. And when they try to find a train or a bus or some kind of mass transit to get them downtown, they find that there is none.
And so many people I know are getting an absolute hard-on for the idea that Lyft's and Uber's exit will "encourage" "innovation" and creation of "small" "local" ride-share apps. Some will concentrate on service to the airport! Others will cover downtown! And others will provide service to outlying areas!
Because, obviously, the kind of hard-core business travelers and tech junkies Austin wants to attract with its shiny new hotels and SXSW are going to LOVE downloading three more "local" apps to get the service Uber alone offered.
Mostly, though, I'm going to start leaving parties early, so I'm not the last sober person standing when the drunks start sniffing around for a ride home -- to south of Wm Cannon when I live in North Austin.
sofar at June 1, 2016 7:46 AM
You wanna cut DUIs in Travis County? Take away the licenses of anyone in the DA's office.
In 2014, Rosemary Lehmberg, Travis County DA, was busted and made a spectacle of herself in her arrest video. She had to be restrained in leg irons at her arrest and had an open bottle of vodka in the car at the arrest.
The Travis County DA's office subsequently pressed charges against Governor Rick Perry, saying he abused his power, when he refused to fund the Lehmberg-headed Public Integrity Unit of the DA's office and pressed additional charges when he insisted she step down in light of her drinking problem, public intoxication, and resisting arrest at her DUI bust. The Public Integrity Unit is responsible for investigating and prosecuting corruption by public officials.
The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post, none of which can be considered an organ of the Republican Party, all decried Lehmberg's Perry prosecution as politically motivated.
Lehmberg was the DA who pursued a political vendetta against Tom Delay, securing a conviction for money laundering in a lower court that was quickly overturned on appeal and the appeal upheld upon judicial review.
In February 2016, Travis County prosecutor, Erika Hansen, was busted for driving while intoxicated.
I think the prosecutors in Travis County have the wrong idea about what passing the bar exam means.
Conan the Grammarian at June 1, 2016 12:10 PM
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