Uber, Lyft Save Lives But Taxi Drivers, Politicians Could Care Less

Ridesharing has long been encouraged to help address environmental issues such as pollution, not to mention ease traffic. Today however, ridesharing services have gone as far as saving lives as well.

Like in the case of ridesharing services such as Uber and Lyft, the service has not only saved them on traditional daily problems of fuel cost, traffic and parking space woes but also protecting them for possible accidents and harm.

With Uberand or Lyft available, the issue on drunk-driving comes to mind. For people who have consumed too much alcohol than they can, such results in accidents or even life-threatening results.

This is backed up by studies which claim that drunk driving-related accidents and traffic-related fatalities drop when a risdesharing service like Uber starts its operations on a certain city.

Do take note that while the two seems to be interrelated, such doesn’t hold true all the time. With the ridesharing services, drunk drivers are kept off the streets while traffic fatalities refers to younger people being kept out of the street (alleged to be more dangerous drivers when sober in the opinion of Jeffrey Dorfman of Forbes).

In all, ridesharing services seem to be doing a lot of good and this academic study that shows almost a regular 16.3% decline in traffic fatalities for cities using Uber or Lyft seems a pretty convincing solution.

But while the whole ridesharing scheme is a benefit for anyone at any time, there are groups obviously against it. At the top of the list are taxi drivers who will obviously get stiff competition brought up by availability and convenience of a ride-sharing service.

To sum it all up, taxi drivers are threatened – particularly their income. Politicians have obviously taken note of such, a result of why certain cities like Austin have banned ridesharing services.

Such has sparked debates on whether ridesharing should be banned. This is despite the positive results it has brought – keeping the roads safer and saving more lives.

Though the figures can be shown in most cities where Uber or Lyft has been in effect, there could be flaws such as added safety of passengers or perhaps higher rates of the service that may render some point of contention.

But in the end, the decision should be left to the rider and not the ones offering the service. At least now, taxi drivers may value passengers more rather than hand-picking who they want to service.