If you live in San Francisco, chances are you've used a rideshare service like Lyft or Uber. While these companies have received attention for a variety of reasons, including the safety of riding in one on their cars, a new study shows that rideshare drivers have better driving habits than taxi drivers and are therefore safer rides.
The study, conducted by Zendrive, a company that aims to improve driving habits, looked at 1,000 drivers on a specific route between June and August. Using their technology, which can easily be plugged into the rideshare app, they are able to use sensors to track speeding or cellphone use while driving. Based on this tracking, Zendrive found that taxi drivers are 46% more likely to speed than a rideshare driver and 18% more likely than a “non professional” driver. Taxi drivers are also 26% more likely than rideshare drivers to have other unsafe driving practices like using a cellphone or hard braking.
The company tested over 1,000 drivers from the taxi industry, Uber, Lyft, Sidecar, and everyday people. Out of the 1,000 rides, 500 were rideshare, 300 were taxis, and the remainder were drives by regular people. The company used “secret passengers,” similar to secret shoppers, to take rides and provide any additional documentation of unsafe driving. The drivers had no idea that there were secret passengers in their rides nor what using the Zendrive app would document.
Jonathan Matus, the CEO/Founder of Zendrive, believes that these findings show that rideshare drivers are safer because these companies are able to scrutinize their drivers more. For example, he says, taxi drivers can have one DUI on their background check, but rideshare drivers cannot. Rideshare companies also continue to do background checks after the initial one, in order to make sure their drivers are still being safe.
There has been controversy over exactly what kind of background checks rideshare companies do, however, especially in light of a lawsuit that all three rideshare companies were hit with on Tuesday. But for this pool of 1,000 drivers studied, the information gathered by Zendrive leans towards rideshare drivers being safer options.
Matus believes that both taxi and rideshare drivers have a lot to improve on, though, and this study is the basis for further discussions in the transportation industry. “This isn’t a global conclusion,” said Matus. “We just wanted to bring this information to the public’s attention to help drivers become safer.”
Top photo courtesy of Colin/Flickr, infographic from Zendrive
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