Fatal car crashes increased after Uber/Lyft launched in USA cities

[watty]

Fatal crashes in the USA were dropping for over 50yrs but started rising again in 2010 when Uber/Lyft starting launching their services in USA cities...  A cautionary tale for those of us who use smartphones to source our taxi work...

RSG blog

The meteoric rise of Uber and Lyft may have spurred a deadly outcome, according to new research [LMTonline]

Sum and Substance: A new study from University of Chicago and Rice University researchers shows an uptick in fatal car crashes after Uber and Lyft launched in a city. Prior to the launch of ride-hailing services, fatal traffic deaths hit their lowest number in half a century in 2010, when Uber first began offering rides in San Francisco. 

…In the years before Uber and Lyft started popping up in cities across the United States, deadly car accidents were at record lows.

By 2010, just before the ride-hailing services began to expand en masse, the total number of traffic fatalities sank to 32,885 nationwide, the lowest number since 1949, according to government data. But once Uber and Lyft began aggressively expanding, the authors of a yet-to-be-published study have found, those fatal accidents began to slowly rise once again.

[RSG] Take:  I find it telling that both Uber and Lyft have refused to release data about how many of their drivers have been involved in accidents, or how many have been at fault in accidents, or how many fatalities their drivers or passengers have been involved in. I can certainly understand why these companies might want to keep this issue out of the news.  But as new research like this surfaces, it’s going to be very difficult for Uber and Lyft to keep this issue under wraps.

[silverbullet]

Amateurs

[The Liffey Lip]

Probably something to do with Antisemitism.............it usually has if it's American news.

[Octavia1]

No its youngones on phones fakebooking and texting.....

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texting_while_driving
One o me clients who fly to America says that yung black ladies are the worse offenders and they weaving and crashing all over the kip....

[Rat Catcher]

Stands to reason. We're all familiar with taxis meandering out of control while drivers are fixated on the mytaxi application on their telephone screens. It's all great fun 'till lives are lost and/or insurance premiums increase. Of course firms like mytaxi and Uber will argue that they are working towards driverless vehicles, a utopia that will greatly reduce road deaths.

[Shallowhal]

Stands to reason. We're all familiar with taxis meandering out of control while drivers are fixated on the mytaxi application on their telephone screens. It's all great fun 'till lives are lost and/or insurance premiums increase. Of course firms like mytaxi and Uber will argue that they are working towards driverless vehicles, a utopia that will greatly reduce road deaths.

...and increase ermys meanderings!!

[Octavia1]

Stands to reason. We're all familiar with taxis meandering out of control while drivers are fixated on the mytaxi application on their telephone screens. It's all great fun 'till lives are lost and/or insurance premiums increase. Of course firms like mytaxi and Uber will argue that they are working towards driverless vehicles, a utopia that will greatly reduce road deaths.

I don't understand why phones are not completely voice operated.... The technology is there... Ya can text by voice and search Google by voice..
..why don't they have complete operating phone by voice?
The man
Who puts that together be worth few bob

[The Liffey Lip]

They're working on it........they need uniform voices and accents.............you'll notice the number of kids nowadays talking like Sheldon on Ritalin....not far away now.

[Rat Catcher]

Whether one interacts by voice or vision it still serves as a distraction, particularly among middle aged fat lads who are notoriously bad at multitasking.

[Shallowhal]

Whether one interacts by voice or vision it still serves as a distraction, particularly among middle aged fat lads who are notoriously bad at multitasking.

Enough about yourself....what about the rest of the fleet!!

[Bob Shillin]

Even talking on the phone with handsfree is distracting: I've missed turns while doing same.

[weird al wankovitch]

The Human brain isn't good at multitasking. The ram is too small.

[watty]

Wasn't there some TV program where the presenter said the keyword for the Alexa gadget and it set out thousands of them around the UK?

Might be tricky if you're driving down the road and somebody says the wrong thing 

[Shallowhal]

It's always grand till someone says the wrong thing!

[Vikkiz]

Wasn't there some TV program where the presenter said the keyword for the Alexa gadget and it set out thousands of them around the UK?

Might be tricky if you're driving down the road and somebody says the wrong thing 

Twas a Burger King ad were it said, “Hey Google or Siri or Alexa, what’s this about the new whooper”
That is if Alzheimer’s hasn’t made me forget it all