Do your homework, Austin.

A pragmatic approach to City Hall’s battle with Lyft and Uber.

Tonight I spoke at Austin’s City Council meeting on the topic of Ridesharing. Here is the text of my speech:

Hello, I’m a voting member of Friends of Austin Neighborhoods, and I’ve been driving with Lyft for the past year and a half. I live in the St. John Neighborhood in District 4.

I appreciate the work you've all done to try to find consensus in this highly impassioned discussion. However, I am concerned we keep trying to rally around a solution to a problem we don't understand.

Here’s the bottom line: No one honestly knows which practices used by various ground transportation providers actually make passengers safer. As much as Ridesharing platforms like Lyft and Uber may like us to believe their features are best, no one knows if that’s true. And as much as the traditional ground transportation industry may like us to believe fingerprinting drivers is best, no one knows if that’s true either.

Don’t take my word for it. In December, the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine completed their 18-month consensus study which objectively examined recent innovation in transportation, such as bikesharing, ridesharing, carsharing, and micro-transit. Their 112-page report is a very good read for anyone pondering modern transportation policy. Here are my two favorite excerpts:

Page 64: "Driver background checks are an area in which anecdotes are many but reliable data are few."

Page 65: "The committee was unable to find any careful empirical studies on the effectiveness of any of these methodologies with respect to passenger safety. Current practice, which strikes many as reasonable and prudent, is not evidence of best possible practice."

Here's an idea I think we can all get behind: Let's do our homework.

Let's adopt the citizen's ordinance today, and save taxpayers over $500,000 by some estimates. Let's use some of that savings to commission a research study on the efficacy of various safety mechanisms in ground transportation from an objective third-party. Let's continue to show that Austin is a global leader in technology and innovation, including transportation. And let's prepare for the next time ride-for-hire rules are on the City's agenda by honestly doing our homework.

If the results of that research show that fingerprinting drivers is honestly the best practice for improving the safety of my passengers, I'll happily be the first in line to have my prints taken.

Thank you.