TY - JOUR T1 - Assessing the impact of a local community subsidised rideshare programme on road traffic injuries: an evaluation of the Evesham Saving Lives programme JF - Injury Prevention JO - Inj Prev SP - 232 LP - 237 DO - 10.1136/injuryprev-2020-043728 VL - 27 IS - 3 AU - David K Humphreys AU - Michelle Degli Esposti AU - Frances M Williams AU - Michelle C Kondo AU - Christopher Morrison Y1 - 2021/06/01 UR - http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/27/3/232.abstract N2 - Background Alcohol-related vehicle crashes pose a significant challenge to public health in suburban communities. The Evesham Saving Lives programme operated between late 2015 and 2019 in two townships (Evesham and Voorhees) in New Jersey. The programme subsidised rideshare (eg, Uber) trips from bars and restaurants between the hours of 21:00 and 02:00 to prevent alcohol-related traffic injuries.Methods This study used data from the New Jersey Department of Transportation to examine changes to rates of injury crashes between 2010 and 2018. We used an ecological difference-in-difference design with Bayesian conditional autoregressive Poisson models to compare rates of injury crashes between participating municipalities (n=2) and non-participating municipalities (n=75). Sensitivity analyses included comparison with a weighted synthetic control series.Results The Evesham Saving Lives programme was associated with 18% fewer injury crashes overall (IRR=0.82, 95% credible interval (CrI): 0.76, 0.88). Reductions in crashes were estimated to be greatest at night (IRR=0.62, 95% CrI: 0.48, 0.79), with moderate reductions in the afternoon (IRR=0.80, 95% CrI: 0.72, 0.88). We estimate that around three lives were saved (95% CrI: 2, 5) and around 371 injuries were prevented (95% CrI: 204, 625), potentially making considerable savings in terms of medical and economic expenses.Conclusions These findings support the claim that improving the convenience and reducing the costs of alternative night-time transportation can prevent road traffic injuries. Future studies should aim to replicate these analyses in programmes that have been implemented in other suburban communities across the US.Data used in this study can be obtained on request from the corresponding author. ER -