Ever since
innovative ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft started gaining
popularity, people have made the intuitive assertion that these
services could cut down on drinking and driving. People will choose
an affordable, safe alternative to drunk driving if that
alternative is readily available.
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.
The first thing Uber did was use its own data to see if people
disproportionately called for Uber cars from bars in comparison to
other venues. And indeed:
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.
Next, they used government data
to find out when deaths from DUIs are most likely to occur.
Fatalities due to drunk driving start to peak at midnight, are the
highest from 12:00-3:00 AM, and happen much more often on the
weekends. Uber then gathered their own internal data and found that
Uber transactions spiked at the times when people are most likely
to drink and drive (as depicted in the chart above).
There remains plenty of room for more studies on how Uber is
affecting transportation trends. But early evidence for a positive
impact—an impact that goes far beyond mere consumer convenience—is
already compelling.
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