优步进驻纽约之后，酒驾相关的事故减少了。

Daily chart

Ride-hailing apps may help to curb drunk driving

Alcohol-related car accidents declined in New York after the introduction of Uber

Graphic detail

Apr 4th 2017by THE DATA TEAM

GUN violence in America gets plenty of attention, but cars killmore. Around 40,000 people a year die on American roads, more thanall fatalities caused by firearms (of which two-thirds aresuicides, not homicides). The death rate in America, around 12people per 100,000, is more than twice that of western Europe. Thegrim toll of motor-vehicle deaths is widely seen as unavoidable,given that the United States is a large, sprawling countryprimarily designed around the automobile. However, around a thirdof these deaths involved drunk drivers, suggesting that there is,in fact, substantial room for improvement. And fortunately, itappears that the advent of ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft hashad a welcome impact on road safety.

According to a working paper by Jessica Lynn Peck of theGraduate Centre at the City University of New York, the arrival ofUber to New York City may have helped reduce alcohol-relatedtraffic accidents by 25-35%. Uber was first introduced in the cityin May 2011, but did not spread through the rest of the state untillater. The study uses this as a natural experiment. To control forfactors unrelated to Uber's launch such as adverse weatherconditions, Ms Peck compares accident rates in each of New York’sfive boroughs to those in the counties where Uber was not present,picking those that had the most similar population density andpre-2011 drunk-driving rate.

The four boroughs which were quick to adopt Uber—Manhattan,Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx—all saw decreases in alcohol-relatedcar crashes relative to their controls. By contrast, Staten Island,where Uber caught on more slowly, saw no such decrease. Itshouldn’t take ride-hailing apps to curb drunk driving, but anyreduction is worth hailing.