Uber Hasn't Had an Effect on Drunken-Driving Deaths, Study Finds
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I called ahead to have taxis pick me up for early morning rides to the airport, and they were always early and helped me with my bags. I took taxis over to the Boston College area when I was taking music lessons at a studio there. I took taxis home from sports events and concerts near Fenway. Even when coming out of a crowded show at House of Blues, it was a short wait for taxis.
I never once experienced a broken credit card machine. I once did ask a driver if they accepted credit cards, he said no, and I waited about 30 seconds for the next taxi to come by -- on a side street on the Somerville side of Porter Sq, so not even close to usual taxi spots.
Getting taxis in Boston is cheap, safe, and reliable, with pretty short wait times, easy to deal with dispatchers, drivers who show up on time, cars that are clean and 99.999% of the time have functioning credit card machines.
I honestly don't know what on earth you're talking about.
None of this is an argument against Uber anyway, because people use Uber for features that even good taxis don't have, including price reduction, better real-time tracking, an app interface, and other things. And Uber drivers certainly can do things worse than taxis -- such as simply fail to show up, treat you rudely during the ride, or try to make you exit the car in an inconvenient/unsafe spot of the street at your destination. Uber is not intrinsically better about this kind of thing than taxis.
But some things you absolutely cannot say, at least about taxis in the Boston area, are that they are anything but clean, safe, reliable, punctual, and able to take your credit card.
Also, there is no singular reputation that represents all taxi services. Your idea that all taxi services have a bad reputation only further makes your argument unbelievable. A mom & pop business operating a few taxis in a small suburb is way different than a highly regulated city taxi service competing for medallions. Taxis in some cities are always good, while in other cities they are always bad. Taxis in some countries aren't regulated well enough, making them unsafe, but then in others they are regulated and safe.
"The taxi industry" is (mostly) just a fiction that Uber enthusiasts make up. It certainly is when it comes to taxi service reputations, which vary locally.
By your own admission, you live(d) in Cambridge, which is not Boston! Completely different cab companies, rules, medallions, etc. I can't say shit about it up there. But in Boston, where I've lived for over a decade, it totally sucks! You are out of you god damn mind! Stop talking about things you don't know! As your mass amount of down votes show, you are talking out of your ass, so don't even bother.
As we say in Boston, get the fuck outta here with that shit, kid! Taxis are the WORST
Safe, sure, to the best of my knowledge. Clean? Nuh-uh. Punctual? Nuh-uh. Able to take my credit card? Maybe 50% of the time. "It's broken," and suddenly it's not broken when I shrug and get out of the car.
And with one exception (a dedicated airport service), every dispatcher I ever dealt with was at best a prick. The only time I use taxis now is departing Logan, where I have no choice because they banned Ubers.
While I'm sorry that you have had such bad experiences, since your experiences differ so much from what is common, I don't feel people should base their expectations on what you say.
Instead, you can be nearly certain that it will be a clean, modern taxi, with a functioning card reader, that arrives on time and doesn't require a long wait.
To be fair to Uber, you still can expect taxis to cost more and you still have to watch out for drivers who spot a sucker and take you the long way for a larger fare.
Taxis aren't perfect. But taxis also are not rusted out death traps of lateness with serial killers for drivers and credit card readers that make you sexually barren, as apparently the army of Uber social engineering commenters wants us to believe.
Try living in Cape Town. Before Uber arrived here taxi drivers were straight up extortionists. I mean that in the literal sense. I used to have to pay anywhere for R100 to R150 minimum. Uber now averages about R50 - R60, and the experience is a pleasant one.
So with my other side of the world experiences in mind I can see how something similar might happen elsewhere, such as Boston.
These responses aren't reporting average case experiences with level headed analysis.
They are just one-sidedly saying everything is bad about taxis, including "corruption" even, and how thankful they are Uber "disrupted" them, etc.
It all reads very much like paid social engineering by Uber. I'm sure that's not it, and they are just strong fans defending a company they like.
But the fact that it's all written just like social engineering spam us a good indication that it's not describing realistic, average-case experiences of most taxi users.
But we're the "social engineering commenters" because we're rolling eyes at the idea that dealing with cabs is pleasant. We're shills. I don't think I've ever said this here, but: good grief, dude, get a grip, reality is slipping you.
> But we're the "social engineering commenters" because we're rolling eyes at the idea that dealing with cabs is pleasant.
Yes! Rolling one's eyes at a plain and simple fact, like the simple fact that most taxi experiences are just normal, uneventful rides inside of cars, is derivative from Uber's attempts to social engineer against the culture of using taxis. I don't see why that would merit such a sardonic and rude reply from you.
Most taxi experiences I've had are strictly worse than the equivalent in any of the ride-sharing systems available in Boston. Strictly worse. They're more expensive, the supply is more variable, the drivers are at best a push, and events that cannot happen in Uber/Lyft/Fasten, the fucking around with credit cards and the end-around routes to pump the meter, can't happen. And you know what? I wish this weren't the case, because Uber is a bad company run by bad people. I'd rather use a cab because I don't want to give Uber money. But cabs are that much worse.
But that's "social engineering" commenting, sure, that's meriting backhanded accusations of shilling (and don't dissemble, that is exactly what you are doing even when you try to fig-leaf it). You want to talk shills while you're caping for the cab company? Look inward, brofessor, but it might hurt a little when you do.
The claims made in the thread were that something like 80% of taxis in Boston have defective card readers, and that literally only a single taxi used was clean (the rest were not of acceptable cleanliness).
These are ridiculous, exceptional claims that should be completely disregarded without evidence. When I said so, adding that my experience has been that taxis are just perfectly normal cars with functional parts, everyone tries to take my head off for it.
I even freely admitted many of the benefits to Uber you already pointed out.
Nowhere did I ever claim that taxis are better than Uber, nor that anyone should avoid Uber, nor that they should use taxis. I even stopped to reiterate that several times.
I only said that the outrageous, over-the-top degree to which people were describing the poor condition and service of taxis, in Boston, was flat out wrong and hyperbolic. That's all! Even if taxis are clean and have functioning card readers (they are and they do), someone may still feel Uber, or whatever other service, is a better value. That's 100% consistent with everything I've said in this thread.
Yet your response is basically a straw man setting it up as if I claimed that taxis were superior to other ride sharing services, or that my claims about taxis just being pretty normal cars with working parts is somehow a claim of their superiority over Uber? I really don't know why you're inferring that into what I am saying, but it's not related.
I say this with kindness: then you don't understand that you're doing it. That's ok... but you are.
No, you're missing the point: they understand that it's a useful service. They are just pointing out that the service they provide is now being done better with Uber/Lyft/etc.
> These responses aren't reporting average case experiences with level headed analysis.
They really are. Just because you don't agree doesn't make it not true. You're basically going "I'm not crazy! It's *everyone else that's wrong!"
> It all reads very much like paid social engineering by Uber.
"I'm not crazy! It's a conspiracy I tell you! They're all shills!". Not helping, especially with the half-hearted hedge afterwards that you then back away from instantly with the next line...
We quite frequently found ourselves in cabs with credit card readers, only to be told they didn't work when it came time to pay. I also simply gave up using cabs trying to get to Logan because while they would usually be on time, there were others when they simply wouldn't show up at all. Now you're under the gun to find a ride - not sure if they're late or just not coming.
All I can say is that while I believe you when you say these things (I have no reason to think you'd lie to make a point), I also think you've simply lived a very charmed life when it comes to taxi service in Massachusetts.
The fact is, the taxis in Boston had very little reason to improve their service prior to competition from Uber. Now they're being forced to adapt to survive.
Edit: spelling
The anecdote I described also matches the general experiences of all my friends and family as well, with occasional outliers (both good and bad), so I feel very confident in saying that an average case taxi ride anywhere in the Boston area involves a clean, modern taxi, polite driver, properly functioning credit card machine, a short wait (and no wait at all if you call the dispatcher ahead).
Yes, of course there is variance and sometimes people will have a worse experience. Those worse experiences are very rare, and the taxi services overall are very good the vast majority of the time.
The average-case taxi ride in Boston is quite good.
Dozens of your connections did not say that 80% of the time the card reader is broken, or that they have never traveled in a single clean taxi ever in their lives. These are patently ridiculous ideas being passed off as if they are in some way accurate portrayals of taxi services when they are just cartoonish fictions meant to inflame and cast Uber in an unrealistically positive light.
As I've said repeatedly, none of what I am saying is in any way a criticism of Uber, nor is it a suggestion that anyone should not use Uber if they want to.
All I am saying is that taxi rides are overwhelmingly normal and most everyone already knows this and accepts it and happily uses taxis plenty of the time, even if they also use Uber too.
The people here are trying to make it seem like I'm saying that taxis are made out of gold and you get a free Swedish massage while you ride. Hardly! I'm claiming that most credit card readers are functional and most taxis are fairly modern and clean -- these are not controversial, and to disagree with them is solely a symptom of unrealistic bias, and in this thread anyway seemingly also irrational hatred, towards the taxi business.
You have no earthly idea who I am, who my friends are, and most certainly are not privy to the conversations we've had. While this may be painful to hear, you are not the sole bastion of truth when it comes to taxi experiences. I can not say, for certain, whether you are telling the truth when you say you've had these conversations with your friends and family. To suggest that you're lying about this is absurd though - and I won't do it - because I don't know you, or your friends, and am certainly not privy to any conversations you've had on the matter either. I believe you when you say this.
Do not discount others viewpoints and pretend that you have a priori knowledge on a subject. It diminishes you.
It may indeed be rude for me to directly point it out, but given the way others are treating me in the thread, I won't lose any sleep over it. I don't think I'm making cutting remarks, only remarks that are consistent with basic, universal experiences, not just of me, but everywhere.
Others seem to seek to take these basic, universal experiences and try to claim they aren't universal, and that instead their experiences of crazy statistical outlier events (e.g. zero clean taxis ever) somehow are the common and universal experiences, and that I am being presumptuous or rude for disbelieving that they actually experienced some exceedingly rare event that shouldn't be believed.
It's completely unreasonable to believe that saying 80% of card readers are broken and there are zero clean taxis deserves to be compared in the same breath as a claim like almost every time I rode in a taxi it was just a normal functioning car and nothing stood out as functionally broken or meaningfully substandard in quality.
The two things are not the same kind of claim, even categorically, no matter how much people in the thread don't like it.
Please, go ahead, show me.
The comment in which it was said is here: < https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12191938 >.
I am comparing whatever anecdotes (yours and others) that are supposedly backed up by lots of people you know, with this.
While the people you know might have had some bad experiences sometimes, I wouldn't believe they were anywhere near the claims going on in this thread.
If your connections reported occasional bad experiences with taxis, who would care? It couldn't possibly be relevant to a thread where the entire context of the thread is that people are saying that all Boston taxis are almost always awful and almost always have broken card readers, etc.
I'm not sure how to explain it. I'm trying to say that the connections whose informal opinions you cite as backup couldn't possibly have said something as extreme as what the other people of this thread are saying -- in which case whatever minor and totally expected occasional complaints your sources have had, they aren't relevant.
The mental gymnastics required to follow your train of thought are just astounding. You're argument here seems to be that the opinions of my friends and family can't possibly match with what other people, not even myself have said in a completely different part of this thread. I mean, I guess I agree? What a truly bizarre statement.
"I'm not sure how to explain it."
On this point, we are in complete agreement.
Is it your opinion, or the consensus opinion of your connections, that 80% of the time the card reader is broken, or that the percentage of taxis which are clean is near 0 (or some other claim similar to these)?
If you're not making claims of that extremity, then whatever you are talking about isn't very related to what anyone else here has said, and depending on the specifics, I may even agree with you, but it wouldn't be relevant to a thread where the primary claim that started the disussion is that taxi service is overwhelmingly always unbelievably bad.
If you are making claims of that extremity, then I don't believe them, and feel that disbelieving them is simply a matter of the claims being too much of an outlier to deserve any serious plausibility.
Good luck with everything.
I only mention it because I believe you are replying to comments below, but by making replies to an earlier comment instead of the actual comment you are replying to -- and sometimes this is why.
I've definitely done that before, and thought perhaps it was a reply limit from HN or something (which can happen).
> I don't make it a habit of calling a person a liar with no verifiable proof to the contrary.
This is an unfair mischaracterization of what I've said.
If someone makes an extraordinary claim and has no evidence, you probably shouldn't just believe it. Choosing not to believe it based on a reasonable statistical premise (e.g. the failure rate of card readers is not high enough such that 80% of them are always broken) is perfectly valid, and is not impolite or rude. It's not at all the same thing as "calling them a liar." The burden of proof is on the party making extraordinary claims.
That aside, honest question, because I truly don't understand. You've said things like "I never once experienced a broken credit card machine" and "they were always early and helped me with my bags". I find these claims equally as fantastic as the claims that you seem to disregard from others (not myself) re: this 80% figure. I honestly, truly do not believe that every cab you ever called in 8 years was early. Moreso, I find it very difficult to believe that you believe that this is normal.
So, all this being said, why is it that you feel that your stance on that end of the spectrum is right, and others are wrong. Where is your evidence (not anecdotal), for passing the burden of proof for the extraordinary claims you're making?
I'm not asking anyone to believe that zero card readers are broken. I'm only saying I never experienced a broken one, and never experiencing a broken one isn't that weird because the failure rate is low.
Someone saying that 80% of the time the reader is broken is making an extremely different type of claim, not really even comparable with my analogous claim of not ever experiencing a broken one. While my experience might also differ from average, it is orders of magnitude closer to average than someone happening to experience a broken one 80% of the time.
I'm not sure what to say about the bags comment. Every time I've ever gotten a cab to or from any airport anywhere, from Boston to Hong Kong, the driver helped me with bags if I had them. And all the other drivers helped all the other people in line too.
Maybe you're referring to the fact that I always experienced them coming early -- yes this could be highly variable. My anecdotes are probably no more valuable than others here on that point, mostly because nobody here extended the outrageously extreme claims they made (80% card reader failure, effectively zero clean taxis ever) into the topic of how late taxis are, though they might have (e.g. someone possibly saying another statistically unbelievable thing like 'taxis are always 30 minutes late' or '90% of the time they don't even show up' or something).
Keep in mind that being early only applied to taxis I scheduled from home to the airport. I never called ahead to arrange a taxi except when going to the airport, so those are the only ones which could have possibly been early or late.
The majority of cabs I ever took were cabs I just hailed on the street or at a taxi stand.
Before Uber, every cab I took was smelly, the cars were late 1970s models, sour drivers, etc.
Cabs have gotten a lot better, thanks to Uber.
It is very telling that when a person describes his taxis experiences in a super boring, uncontroversial and simple manner: i.e. that the taxis are just normal cars with credit card readers and you should expect a perfectly normal experience if you get in one -- then everyone here acts like I'm giving some kind of gushing, outrageous praise to taxis, and acts indignant that I don't describe taxis as basically the car Fred Flintstone drove but with killer bees inside.
It's crazy that people are so adamant to do social engineering for Uber that they won't even agree to entirely uncontroversial claims, like most taxis in Boston are clean or have functioning card readers -- things which are indisputably accurate.
I'm not saying you should dislike Uber. I'm not saying you should ride in a taxi. I'm not saying the taxi services are perfect. I'm not saying there are zero bad taxi experiences.
I'm only saying that most taxi experiences in Boston are perfectly uneventful, normal rides that completely meet the expectation of the riders, and don't suffer from the hyperbolic criticisms here.
I'm from Boston. I took a ride from Brighton to Hynes. The cab driver goes through Storrow Dr and he skips the Kenmore exit to get to Hynes. I think he's going to take the Beacon Hill exit and he skips that too.
I asked him why he didn't take the exit and he said, "Oh I thought you wanted to go to the Prudential."
Prudential is the same place as Hynes. The taxi takes me all the way up Storrow to I-93 then to I-90 west finally taking the Copley exit back to Hynes.
My bill ended up $45 from Brighton to Hynes.
I have countless horror stories of cabs not picking me up because the distance was too short (South end to Fenway is too short), credit card machines "not working" so it's cash only, cabs not showing up at all or extremely late.
I even have a cab scam story in Baltimore which I commented about here on HN.
Uber has questionable ethics, but at least I don't have to deal with frustrations.
I've lived in New Englad over a decade so this is my anecdotal experience with Boston cab drivers.
But ride services want to promulgate the idea to cities they bring safety in order to counterbalance the annoyed voices of the yellow cabs decrying the conditions the ride service drivers must endure...
Fair inquiry, but no. They studied the top 100 metro areas, not the Podunks. Now, it does not say whether the rate has remained steady despite, perhaps, an increase in people who now feel comfortable getting drunk cuz they can get a cab fairly easily with the intro of ride services. However, they have not decreased the totals, as they have claimed, according to the findings.
I maintain that Uber is just another option in the top 100 metro areas. If Uber did work everywhere, then I am sure you would see reductions in places that do not have competing services.
So dropping Uber into a city, giving them another option for getting home, might increase the overall level of drinking. This would muddy the drink-driving numbers. For every drunk driven safely home by Uber there may be some other person out there pressured into having a drink that otherwise wouldn't. And some of them might drive.
Drink driving became socially unacceptable in Britain only in the last 20-30 years but alcohol consumption hasn't really changed. The anti drink driving ads on TV every Christmas were really quite hard hitting. I've seen nothing similar in the US.
This BBC page shows some of the ads, and discusses others. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29894885
Using a differences-in-differences specification, we find that fatal accident rates generally decline after the introduction of Uber. Specifically, in the unweighted regressions, we find that entry is associated with a 6 percent decline in the fatal accident rate. Fatal night-time crashes experience a slightly larger decline of 18 percent. 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 percent decline in vehicular fatalities.
...
Again employing a differences-in-differences specification, typically with county specific trends, we find a large and robust decline in the arrest rate for DUIs. Depending upon specification, DUIs are 15 to 62 percent lower after the entry of Uber. The average annual rate of decline after the introduction of Uber is 51.3 percent per year for DUIs.
[1] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2783797
The headline, then: "Uber hasn't had an effect".
The best analysis would likely need to use ride volume data; there's no hint in this study's abstract they've done that, and the paper is paywalled.
In places where Uber has launched, they're probably just picking up riders that would normally take a cab or a train if Uber wasn't there.
In San Francisco, it appears Uber/Lyft have massively increased the total number of paid-rides taken. They're not just shifting trips from taxis or public transit, but also from private car usage – and creating new trips where people would've just stayed in or walked.
That points out another stat a 'gold standard' study should try to identify: fatalities per trips (or ride-miles) taken, rather than just absolute number of fatalities. If cities with Uber have the same number of fatalities, but spread over twice as much travel, that's giant safety and welfare win, too.
Ie - suburban to exburban uber is just expensive and rare, (low coverage), and therefore people are more likely to drunk drive. I mean, how many taxis to start with are there in small suburban towns?