Another native, but people always did and always will drink and drive in Austin, Uber or not. If people drive their cars downtown, or to any restaurant and get drunk, they will probably drive their car back unless they're blackout, blind stinking drunk. Especially if they live in the outer ring of Austin, I dont think they were using Uber to get around. Uber was more for tourists, students, and people who lived in the newer downtown developments.

I feel like this article is kind of editorialized, pandering, and kind of baits the situation because Austin has always had high numbers of traffic accidents. Its one of the cities with the highest rate of road-related deaths, hit and runs, et cetera. Adding tons more people to the city just proportionally raises the numbers. That one dude drove his rented SUV into a crowd of people at SXSW a few years back and the city has always been pushing the "be safe (well call you a free cab, servers have to cut you off)" policy, which hasnt ever stopped any of that. One of the district attorneys got arrested for DUI before that. It has always happened and it will always happen.

I dont really have any strong preferences, and I kind of agree with both sides about a lot of things, but this article seems a bit like it's shilling for Uber as being this thing that will end vehicular deaths, when theres no real evidence for that.