Uber saves lives
The media loved beating up on Uber for dumb & unfair reasons when it rescued our cities from decades of taxi tyranny back in 2015. But they sucked at giving us positive news like lower car fatalities.
Uber Hate
In 2016 the national and local media were doing everything they could to dismiss, deride and shame Uber for its cowboy culture and its refusal to submit to the local regulations that had been protecting horrible monopoly yellow cab franchises in every major city for 75 years.
Uber was accused by the mainstream media, public transit zealots and local political hacks of causing traffic deaths, increasing congestion, stealing riders from public transit, costing taxi drivers their jobs, sexual harassment by drivers, dead drivers, etc. --- every economic and social ill their small and negative liberal minds could imagine.
As a part-time Uber driver in Pittsburgh and long-time critic of crooked, racist, cheating monopoly cab companies, I watched Uber-hate closely in the media and tried as best I could to fight it on the Web.
In 2016 it was already obvious to me that Uber was liberating 98 percent of the population -- minorities, students, rich nightlife people, poor, suburbanites, old people, drunks -- from the local tyranny of taxis and public buses that had mis- or under-served them for decades.
This NPR story was typical of the liberal media, which up-played negative Uber stories or down-played publicized studies (usually done by Uber-haters) :
Uber Hasn’t Had An Effect On Drunken-Driving Deaths ...
NPR
Jul 29, 2016 — A new study of data from across the US finds ride-sharing apps have had no effect on alcohol-related traffic fatalities.
In 2016 I already knew DUIs were down in the suburbs because of Uber; suburban cops already were complaining that DUI income was down considerably. I saw how many riders had left their cars at a bar and taken an Uber home.
It wasn’t hard to predict that highway deaths and drunk driving were going to go down because of the soaring popularity of Uber and Lyft.
The lockdowns ended my Uber career on St. Patrick’s Day weekend of 2020, so I haven’t paid as close attention to Uber Hate as I once did.
I didn’t see this 2023 study until today. There’s a good chance you didn’t hear about it, either, because it’s the kind of positive news about Uber that defied the media narrative that Uber was 98 percent bad for you and your town.
It’s a long study by a bunch of academics -- at Berkely no-less -- that confirms what anyone with an open mind in the media -- ha -- would have seen coming in 2015 if they hadn’t been blinded by Uber Hate.
https://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/ldavis/Anderson%20and%20Davis%20Uber.pdf
You can slog through the paper, but its big point is:
“.... we find a consistent negative effect of ridesharing
on traffic fatalities. Impacts concentrate during nights and weekends and are robust across a range of alternative specifications. Overall, our results imply that ridesharing has decreased U.S. traffic fatalities by 5.4% in areas where it operates. Based on conventional estimates of the value of statistical life the annual life-saving benefits are $6.8 billion.”
Grok
I asked Grok a question about media coverage of Uber’s contribution to lower road deaths and got a good response that indicates I missed some major coverage of the Berkeley studies but makes my point that the media didn’t go out of its way to report what should be the positive news.
https://x.com/i/grok/share/w5ZKwurgt1yLoBcV2cYRcxPSJ
Grok is too reasonable.
I’ll stick to my guns: Anyone who’s driven for Uber for more than a month knows Uber is a net benefit for road safety and transportation freedom.
And here are some of my Uber rantings .... https://clips.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-uber-again?utm_source=publication-search