The Risk of Rideshare Accidents: Everything You Need to Know

Transportation has been revolutionized by ridesharing services as the services saw more than 1.7 billion users in 2023. Services like Uber and Lyft have become a staple in the daily lives of millions of people across the globe. 

However, there are accident risks involved in using ridesharing services. As the platforms grow, more rideshare drivers are put in difficult driving situations dealing with dense traffic. Naturally, this results in accidents that passengers and drivers both need to be wary of. 

Jeff Nadrich of Nadrich Accident Injury Lawyers, a Modesto law firm handling Uber accident cases, notes that a 2024 study found that about one in three rideshare drivers have reported being involved in work-related crashes.

This stat should concern those who rely on rideshare apps for their day-to-day schedule. As rideshare platforms continue to expand, we need to consider their safety implications and think through how to minimize the rate of disaster in the future.

Key Takeaways

There are several key takeaways when considering rideshare accidents:

• Increased traffic fatalities: Ridesharing has contributed to a two to three percent higher rate of traffic fatalities in the United States. This means that there is a higher risk of traffic fatality when you use rideshare services or share roads with rideshare vehicles.
• Liability coverage: Lyft and Uber provide as much as $1 million worth of liability coverage to drivers. However, this only applies when passengers are in vehicles. This means that if you are involved in an accident involving a rideshare vehicle, the coverage will dramatically vary depending on the app status of the driver.
• Varying legal options: Legal options vary for rideshare accident victims based on if they were pedestrians, cyclists, other drivers or passengers at the time of the accident. Your path to compensation after a rideshare accident will depend on the role you played in the accident.
• The majority of fatality victims are third parties: 58 percent of fatality victims in rideshare accidents are not passengers or drivers. This means that everybody on the road bears the burden of an increased risk of fatal accidents stemming from rideshare services.
• Most rideshare accidents happen in urban locations: 90 percent of crashes involving Uber happen in urban locations. This means that those living in cities see the highest risk of being in a rideshare accident.

Additional Risk of Injury Crash

A 2021 study found that for every 100 rideshare trips inside a “taxi zone-hour,” the odds of an injury crash occurring increased by 4.6 percent when compared with “control taxi zone-hours.”

In other words, ridesharing appears to increase the risk of an injury crash occurring in a specific area more than taxis do.

The study concluded that rideshare services contribute to more of an injury burden because of motor vehicle crashes.

The study suggests that benefits of ridesharing regarding the reduction of alcohol-related crashes might be offset by other increases in pedestrian and motorist crashes related to ridesharing.