Rideshare drivers in West Coast cities — Seattle, San Francisco, Portland and San Diego — topped the list of metros with the safest rideshare drivers, according to our new study based upon data from more than 518,000 rideshare trips over 7-million miles taken from June to August of this year. Austin was also among the top five safest rideshare cities. Cities with the least safe rideshare drivers were concentrated in southern states and included, Atlanta, Forth Worth, Houston, Miami and Dallas.
Our study also found that the safest time of day to use a ridesharing service was for 6–9AM on weekdays and 9–12 PM on weekends, while the least safe time was Noon — 3PM for weekdays and 6–9 AM for weekends.
We developed the study, which was done in partnership with SherpaShare, based upon an analysis of data covering approximately seven million miles driven and examining such critical factors as each driver’s control, caution and focus. The study included data from 30 of the largest metro areas in the U.S.
The top five safest rideshare cities in order were: Seattle, San Francisco, Austin, Portland and San Diego, while the bottom five cities were: Atlanta, Fort Worth, Houston, Miami and Dallas. These rankings are based upon Zendrive Score, a safety benchmark that incorporates key predictors of driving risk, including speeding, hard braking, aggressive driving and distracted driving due to mobile phone use.
The study also examined safety as it relates to time-of-day and day-of-week for several of the largest U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, New York, Miami and San Francisco.
The results were quite unexpected. The most dangerous rideshare trips occur in the early morning hours of 6–9 AM on weekends, as well as from midnight to 3 AM on Monday and Tuesday. During weekdays, the riskiest period for rideshare services is in the afternoon between Noon and 3PM. Late night weekend trips from 9PM to Midnight are ranked lowest for safety risk, indicating better driving performance overall for evening outings on Saturdays.
The overall average of rideshare safety by day of week revealed an interesting trend of least safest driving patterns on Sunday — perhaps ironically confirming the myth of the “Sunday driver.”
Zendrive recommends rideshare fleet managers make use of safety analytics to continuously work with their drivers to improve best driving practices, training and overall reliability for the best possible security of their passengers.
Zendrive will continue to monitor these rankings on a quarterly basis as a bellwether for the overall safety of the ridesharing economy.
