Public safety was the theme

of today’s press conference at CLEAT, Combined Law Enforcement Association of Texas. The Austin Firefighters Association and the Austin-Travis County EMS Association joined the Austin Police Association in asking that Austinites vote against proposition 1. Bob Nicks, President of the Austin Firefighters Association, takes the microphone here as the representatives of all three organizations spoke in turn of their common responsibility of keeping the Austin public safe. Unsurprisingly, they were unanimous and emphatic in stating that fingerprinting Uber and Lyft drivers is important for public safety. Having quickly disposed of that issue, they moved on to talk more than any other group to my knowledge about the danger of Uber and Lyft drivers picking up and dropping off passengers in traffic. A vote against proposition 1 keeps the present prohibition of dropping off and picking up passengers in traffic.

The CLEAT members then turned the microphone over to Dr. Matt Hersh, a statistician at UT who has debunked Uber and Lyft’s statements that they are keeping Austinites safe from drunk drivers. Please see the file in the link below. Being familiar with scatter plots and regression lines drawn to them, I can tell you that this is a valid, standard statistical technique, as strange as they might look to the unpracticed eye. From the written document:

Uber has claimed that from 2013 to 2014, there is a 24% decrease in DWI related accidents. This is misleading and taking into account that DWI related accidents were on the decline before Uber started operating in any meaningful way, there is no evidence of a correlation between TNCs and DWI related accidents or DWI arrests in Austin.

The best report I’ve read by a journalist was written by Audrey McGlinchy for The Austin Monitor. Here the article deals with a common-sense problem with the quality of the data.

One advertisement from the Uber- and Lyft-funded political action committee Ridesharing Works for Austin contends that a vote for Prop 1 will help “prevent drunk driving in Austin and surrounding neighborhoods.” Another reads, “Since Uber and Lyft came to Austin, drunk driving-related crashes are down 18%.”

Austin Police Lt. Blake Johnson demonstrated for the Monitor the near impossibility of proving that these two things are related.

“Unless you had a poll-taker riding with every Uber driver when they picked up an intoxicated passenger, (one) who polled them directly — ‘Was this the deciding factor for you not to drink and drive?’ — and recorded it accurately, could you truly say that’s the fact?” he asks.

When pressed, Ridesharing Works agrees — and then quickly moves on.