Does the Implementation of Ride-Hailing Services Affect Urban Road Safety? The Experience of Madrid.

María Flor,Armando Ortuño,Begoña Guirao

doi:10.3390/ijerph19053078

Abstract

In recent years, changes have occurred in consumption, ownership, and social relations, giving rise to new economic models in which technology enables new ways of connecting, creating, and sharing value. The nature of transport has transformed with the emergence of mobile applications, such as Uber and Cabify, which offer an alternative to the services traditionally provided by the taxi and chauffeur-driven hire vehicle (CDV) sectors. These services have developed within a context of market regulation of the taxi and CDV which are subject to considerable unjustified restrictions for entering and operating in the market, including the numerus clausus of licenses, the limited geographical scope of the license and, in the case of taxis, the regulation of prices as inflexible public rates. Bearing in mind the latest legislative changes affecting mostly the provision of the services of these platforms, this study analyzes whether the number of traffic accident victims has fallen since the introduction of these services in the city of Madrid using a Random Effects Negative Binominal model. The results show that the deployment of these platforms is associated with a reduction of 25% in the number of serious injuries and deaths.

Highlights

Academic Editors: Francisco AlonsoThe advance of the sharing economy and collaborative consumption has had a strong impact on different sectors, transport, with the emergence of companies such as Uber or Cabify which, using the p2p networks, have established a foothold in the complex sector of passenger transportation
This ratio of 1:30 is not respected, and in recent years, this has constituted the principal reason for the protests by the taxi drivers who demand that limits are set on the granting of chauffeur-driven hire vehicle (CDV) licenses
The results obtained in this study suggest that the arrival of Uber and Cabify to the municipality of Madrid could be associated with a reduction in the number of serious injuries and deaths in traffic accidents

Summary

Introduction

Academic Editors: Francisco AlonsoThe advance of the sharing economy and collaborative consumption has had a strong impact on different sectors, transport, with the emergence of companies such as Uber or Cabify which, using the p2p networks, have established a foothold in the complex sector of passenger transportation. One of the most salient aspects of these authorizations is their limitation, as new licenses cannot be granted if there are more than one CDV for every 30 taxis [2] This ratio of 1:30 is not respected, and in recent years, this has constituted the principal reason for the protests by the taxi drivers who demand that limits are set on the granting of CDV licenses. For this reason, in April 2018, the Royal Decree Law 3/2018 of 20 April was passed, regarding the leasing of chauffeur-driven vehicles with the principal novelty being the legal consolidation of a limit of one CDV license for every 30 taxi licenses. For the taxi drivers, these measures were “insufficient and poor” and the protests from this sector continued for months, leading to the collapse of the principal roads of Madrid and and Cristina Esteban

Methods

Results

Conclusion