In the 15 months since Uber entered the Baton Rouge market, DUI arrests have decreased nearly 18% in the city of Baton Rouge, according to Metro Councilmember Ryan Heck, who gathered the data from the Baton Rouge Police Department.
Between August 2014—the month Uber’s ride-sharing app became available in Baton Rouge—and August of this year, Baton Rouge Police made 893 DUI arrests. That’s 17.8% fewer than the 1,087 they made during the same period the previous year.
Heck, who was among the Metro Council members who led an effort to bring Uber to Baton Rouge, says it’s too soon to attribute the decrease to Uber alone. But Baton Rouge Police Chief Carl Dabadie believes the ride-sharing service deserves at least some credit.
“We feel that taxis along with ride-sharing services and awareness have all contributed to the decrease,” Dabadie says. “Impaired individuals are using all available services due to increased availability and convenience.”
It’s unclear whether the decrease is parish wide, as statistics for 2015 from the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s office were not available. Data from the Louisiana Highway Safety Commission, however, shows a 20% decline in DUI arrests throughout East Baton Rouge Parish between 2013 and 2014. Uber was in operation here for the last four months of 2014.
Uber’s General Manager for the Gulf Coast Region, Tom Hayes, says Baton Rouge is not the only market to see a correlation between Uber and declining DUI rates. San Francisco, Philadelphia and Tampa are among several cities that have noted a decrease in DUIs following the arrival of Uber and other ride-sharing apps into those markets, he says.
“It’s exciting to see those numbers go down and our hope is that our services are contributing to that,” Hayes says
Heck says several factors could be at play and cautions against drawing too many conclusions from a small set of data.
“It could have been a whole lot of things,” he says. “Still, the fact remains we’ve had 18% fewer DUI arrests since Uber started here.”
—Stephanie Riegel
