But there are still huge, important differences between public transport and "ride sharing". Public transportation almost never takes you point to point. You are expected to navigate public transportation on your own, including getting in and out at the right stops. Public transportation usually has sharply reduced service several hours before bars close. You also need a ticket, which often means you must be sober enough to work a machine that only takes cash.
If public transport is your ride home, you need to be a lot more sober than the people the author is writing about.
There are important differences compared to taxis, too. To take a taxi, you must (often) be prepared to pay in cash. You must have enough verbal control to give your address.
It is not implausible that ride sharing apps enable a kind of binge drinking that is qualitatively different from the kind people do when they have to take another way home.
Having lived in London when I was younger I beg to differ. I only ended up at the last stop and having to walk home a couple of miles a few times. One time I managed to cycle from Leicester Square to Chelsea - I don't know why, I didn't live anywhere near Chelsea.
Ride sharing certainly increased my chances of getting home successfully, though my anecdotal experience is it wouldn't have had an impact on levity or intoxication.
By the time I entered the workforce in 1999, this sort of thing was on the wane, although it varied enormously by industry and company. I think the change happened because of the increasing computerisation of jobs (where you could do more damage with the tap of a finger), in addition to women joining the workforce in more senior positions. And probably longer commutes, tougher drink-driving laws, and more formalised HR policies.
A small part of me is nostalgic for it, but it was obviously ridiculously unhealthy. That said, a lot of work was actually done in the pub, and it's possible that people found solutions with their social guard down that they wouldn't have found whilst in the office.
This was the end of 1998. The company was traders and there were numerous bottles of hard alcohol in the open. I was amazed.
I only need to be sober enough to walk a short way (Bus) or go up some stairs (Taxi). [most of the ride sharing is illegal here, as they are basically alternative taxis - though they still exist. The taxi service isn't all that expensive, though, and easy to get]
(Some) Taxi companies have apps too.
Showing a piece of paper with your address on it is not harder than using an app.
No?! I grew up a 500 miles from public transportation, I assure you plenty of drinking happened in my community. And history is replete with people drinking in the past, more so than we drink now!
This part of your statement baffles me.
Rinse. Repeat.
I can't walk anything resembling a straight line by the end of the night but at least I won't be driving home drunk.
At no point, ever, did they say anything like public transport being a necessary condition to have people drinking. Come on.
I've simply never heard anyone suggest a move to the city, so they could drink more easily, or more often.
That includes people I grew up with in a rural setting, and people I know well in the large city I now live in.
I feel that this is perhaps a thought given rise, by people who haven't lived without public transit. It just doesn't scan.
Designated drivers have been a thing forever, as well as passing out on a buddy's couch.
If anything, people in rural areas seem to drink more, due to boredom, compared to city dwellers.
Maybe your experiences are different, but it sure seems strange on this side of the screen.
I browse a lot of driver subreddits (r/uberdrivers, r/doordash, r/doordash_drivers, etc) and it's surprisingly common to see people complain about things like this. Imo this is extra weird when you consider this is a major selling point of these apps - "You can work your own schedule and you won't have a boss to worry about" is part of the allure and is often even how the apps are advertised. I would be interested to know why this is such a common theme but people don't usually comment on the why on reddit
But he didn't mention this in the article at all so apparently that's not his complaint. What he does complain about is indeed what a taxi service is for. I wouldn't call Uber a "rideshare" anymore, this is how it started but all Uber drivers are pros now. It's just a "taxi license (and worker rights) avoiding taxi service" now :P
The idea of ridesharing was that you'd take a trip to place X and people could chip in and join you for the trip. But literally nobody uses Uber for that anymore.
The license systems were indeed pretty bad, the scarcity made them artificially expensive which was pretty ridiculous. The problem was the investment that taxi drivers had made, it made it pretty much impossible to abandon the system.
Still I don't think Uber really helps the drivers. Now they have to share their already-low wage with a megacorporation.
"Hold her down, and I'll keep her mouth busy". And of course they ask him why he isn't laughing.
It just sounds made up for article dramitism.
Do people drink more because of cheap ride share--yes.
The problem is ride share is not cheap anymore.
Lyft and Uber do not enable binge drinking, they enable social binge drinking. The violent drunks I knew of growing up were plenty content on getting hammered at home and becoming violent. Most would become violent well after they would have been cutoff by a bartender.
Also, yes, it is worse when the person is drinking out of the home, because that means family members have a lot less control over the drinking and less warning.
And domestic violence really doesn't have a high requirement of blood alcohol level. Even very minor levels can disinhibit a person, especially if he is already habituated to act out on his family members.
When something is cheap, it's consumed more. When it's free of consequences, consuming more is easier. Like how iPhone created a spike in data usage, being not subject to DUI or reducing chances of immediate death is a nice excuse to remove prohibitions and consume more alcohol.
There is however some debate if consumption is really reduced by making it expensive and inconvenient, and if it is simply a tax on poor people who are at work during weekdays.
I can also speculate: Population centers have a higher density of bars and taxis. Simply because there is a larger client base.
Without evidence, you cannot tell.