Open AccessRidehailing and alcohol-involved traffic fatalities in the United States: The average and heterogeneous association of uber
Author(s) -
Noli Brazil,
David S. Kirk
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0238744
Subject(s) - metropolitan area , environmental health , poison control , geography , multivariate statistics , demography , injury prevention , psychological intervention , suicide prevention , human factors and ergonomics , multivariate analysis , drunk drivers , occupational safety and health , association (psychology) , transport engineering , medicine , drunk driving , engineering , psychology , statistics , mathematics , archaeology , pathology , psychiatry , sociology , psychotherapist
Ridehailing services such as Uber have been promoted as viable interventions for curbing alcohol-involved driving fatalities. However, evidence of ridehailing’s impact has been mixed, with some studies finding no association but others finding either an increase or a decrease in fatalities. We contribute to this literature by examining more recent years of data, which capture a period during which Uber ridership has grown substantially and alcohol-involved fatalities have increased. Furthermore, we test whether the relationship between Uber availability and traffic fatalities depends on local characteristics. We employ multivariate regression models to test the association between Uber availability and total, alcohol-involved, and weekend and holiday-specific traffic fatalities in the 100 most populated metropolitan areas in the United States between 2009 and 2017. We find that Uber availability is not associated with changes in total, alcohol-involved, and weekend and holiday-specific traffic fatalities in aggregate, yet it is associated with increased traffic fatalities in urban, densely populated counties.