US working papers show a reduction in alcohol-related car accidents since the arrival of Uber VTCs in New York.
It’s child’s play: application, geolocation, direction home. After a drunken evening, the VTCs saved more than one alcoholic soul. Perhaps they even avoided a few road accidents… Simplifying the taxi system via smartphone applications tends to make the process more accessible, more automatic. Who takes his car to go out to party when there is Uber, or the other less expensive companies that have gradually arrived on the market?
It is precisely this empirical intuition that prompted a team of scientists to study the impact of VTCs on alcohol-related road accidents. Researchers at New York University have published ” working papers “(Working documents not published in a journal, but which could possibly serve as a basis for an in-depth study) on the question, identified by the journal The Economist.
40 fewer collisions per month
According to the authors of these documents, the arrival of VTCs in New York in 2011 is associated with a gradual decrease of 20 to 30% in the number of alcohol-related accidents in the city – or 40 fewer collisions per month.
To arrive at this figure, the authors reviewed the city’s road safety data for the five New York City neighborhoods between 1989 and 2013. They compared it to “control places” – five neighborhoods in New York State. New York at equal density and road accidentology, in which Uber has not established itself.
Result: in the districts invested by Uber (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx), after ruling out the confounding factors, the researchers observed a drop in road accidents linked to alcohol between 2011 and 2013. On the contrary, in another part of town (Staten Island) where VTCs arrived later, the figures show no decrease in the number of accidents.
Risk reduction
From previous work, carried out in California between 2009 (date of implementation of the VTC) and 2014 by Temple University (Philadelphia), had reached a similar conclusion, with a decrease of 3.6% to 5.6% in road fatalities alcohol-related.
In the United States, 40,000 people die on the roads each year, a third of them after consuming alcohol. If this very preliminary work does not constitute a call to download the VTC application, it nevertheless has the interest of drawing attention to a potential risk reduction factor.
A commercial niche
The famous company is also aware of it, she who willingly plays on this table to attract new customers around the world. In Russia, where alcohol is causing a lot of damage to the roads, Uber carried out a commercial operation in May with a chain of French restaurants. On the labels of a limited edition of wine bottles, the VTC leader had hidden a car accident in the background. On the back of the bottle was a promo code to get a free ride.
Another original initiative: an “Uber Safe” terminal in the streets of Toronto (Canada), equipped with a breathalyzer. The party animal, invited to take a breather to find out if he can hit the road, is offered a free race in case of drunkenness.
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