Ridesharing has been advertised as one way  to catch a ride more easily and to avoid drunk driving. While the services have been very popular in recent years, especially in major cities like San Diego and elsewhere in California, some studies want to know exactly how much, if at all, these ride services actually decrease the number of serious or deadly drunk driving actions. 

Use of ridesharing services like Uber and Lyft has decreased the number of drunk driving accidents in certain American cities, according to a new report. However, access to a driver that can be delivered at the click of a button on your smartphone doesn’t always lead to a reduction in drunk driving crashes. Uber affects crashes differently in area cities, according to a new study.

They looked at crash histories and Uber availability from 2013 to 2016 in four cities, including San Antonio, Las Vegas, Reno and Portland. Uber is currently the biggest ride sharing business in the country. Alcohol involved crashes were minimized by as much as 60% in Portland but experienced no decrease in Reno, Nevada. They found that they did not detect any reduction in crashes overall or even when there was a reduction in alcohol involved crashes.

According to the study’s researchers, there could be something offsetting the reduction in crashes associated with alcohol such as increases in accidents that don’t involve alcohol. For Americans between the ages of 13 and 25, car crashes are the biggest cause of fatalities. They killed more than 35,000 individuals in 2015 and injured another 2.4 million. One-third of those deadly accidents were in some way connected to alcohol. Ride sharing may be one way to contact a lifeline for help if you are under the influence and do not want to operate your vehicle at that time.