{"id":29869,"date":"2020-07-28T20:36:59","date_gmt":"2020-07-29T01:36:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=29869"},"modified":"2020-07-28T20:36:59","modified_gmt":"2020-07-29T01:36:59","slug":"a-simple-case-of-probability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2020\/07\/28\/a-simple-case-of-probability\/","title":{"rendered":"A Simple Case Of Probability"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you simplify reality and assume that every driver has an N chance of having an accident – say, hitting and killing a pedestrian – then it seems likely that increasing the number of drivers and trips will end up killing more people.<\/p>\n

And that seems to be the salient conclusion of this National Bureau of Economic Research<\/strong><\/em> report<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

While ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft provide convenient transportation and flexible job opportunities, a new study suggests that these benefits may also come with a number of costs. Fatalities among automobile occupants and pedestrians, gasoline consumption, and traffic congestion have all risen since the ride-hailing services were launched in 2010, while public transportation ridership has fallen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are lots of caveats, of course – correlation vs causation, other factors such as smartphone distractions, and they think accident rates might go down as drivers gain experience.<\/p>\n

I doubt it. I cannot help but note that ride hailing does not result in a reduction of trips, but in an increase<\/em> in trips, speaking intuitively. Contrast this to mass transit, such as buses and subways, where there’s one driver responsible for far more passengers.<\/p>\n

Of course there’s going to be more accidents with ride hailing.<\/p>\n

Perhaps Uber, Lyft<\/strong><\/em>, and all the others should be subject to an additional tax to recover the productivity of those who are killed by them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you simplify reality and assume that every driver has an N chance of having an accident – say, hitting and killing a pedestrian – then it seems likely that increasing the number of drivers and trips will end up killing more people. And that seems to be the salient \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29869"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29871,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29869\/revisions\/29871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}