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Markets in Everything: Replacement Drivers
The NYTimes reports on Korean replacement drivers - they drive drunks home in the drunk's own car.
Their work has become such an essential part of life in Seoul and other major cities of South Korea that the national statistical office last year began monitoring the price of replacement driver services as an element in calculating the benchmark consumer price index. An estimated 100,000 replacement drivers handle 700,000 customers a day across the country, the number increasing by 30 percent on Fridays, according to the Korea Service Driver Society, a lobby for replacement drivers.
This seems like a great idea and it's obviously a huge success in Korea. Why not in the United States?
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on July 10, 2007 at 05:38 PM in Economics, Travels | Permalink
Comments
Korea is significantly more dense than america is. The few places dense enough for this to work here, like New York, already have both abundant public transit and a flourishing taxi industry
Posted by: Jeb at Jul 10, 2007 5:49:13 PM
because the average korean is more intelligent and more organized than the average american.
Posted by: adrian at Jul 10, 2007 5:50:54 PM
This could also be viewed as a market for sobriety.
Posted by: M. Hodak at Jul 10, 2007 6:03:41 PM
I always walk to the bar. I assume thats how i get home.
Posted by: yoyo at Jul 10, 2007 6:34:37 PM
This has been going on for years in London. Someone comes on a foldable scooter and puts it in your boot so that he can get home easily himself. Typically you see ads above the urinals in the pub (I don't know if they try to cater to women at all). I forget the name of the service
Posted by: anon at Jul 10, 2007 6:37:09 PM
Why not in the United States?
Some orders take Mr. Hur outside Seoul to places where there is no public transportation or where it has stopped running for the night, complicating his journey back to the capital. “You walk and run to reach a gas station or a toll gate,” he said. “There, you hitch a ride on a truck bound for Seoul. You constantly think how fast and cheaply you can return to Seoul to get another order.”
Well... in the US, there's only one borough of one city in which travel to a random bar from a random startpoint is feasible at 3 am in a reasonable amount of time via public transportation. And people who aren't rich enough to have their own driver; live in Manhattan; and are going to a bar in Manhattan, probably wouldn't be driving to the bar anyway.
And in no city of the US is hitchhiking regularly, late at night, feasible.
In places without such public transportation, such a service would probably be more expensive (and slower) than taking a taxi there and back, since the replacement driver would have to end up taking a taxi (or having his company send a shuttle) to and from each call.
Posted by: Alex F at Jul 10, 2007 6:42:17 PM
The few places dense enough for this to work here, like New York, already have both abundant public transit and a flourishing taxi industry
Half the population of Korea lives in, or in the immediate vicinity of, Seoul, a city more populous than New York, but not much larger. Seoul's public transportation is -- I would submit -- vastly superior to New York's (my experience of New York's public transport being that it is unreliable and often kind of gross, although it does run 24-7 -- useful for drunks, I guess) although I think people rely on the bus-system in Seoul more than they do in NYC. Seoul also has plenty of cabs.
The difference is probably that the denizens of Seoul own cars in greater numbers than the denizens of New York. Or at least, that they use them more, just to go out. My impression is that New York's core was built up primarily in the 19th century, and has adapted poorly to 20th and 21st century automobile use, so many people who live in Manhattan don't bother to get cars, or don't use them just to get around the city. Seoul, on the other hand, was mostly built after 1950. It's got huge multi-lane roads all throughout the city (you can see them running everywhere if you look at Google Maps in satellite view, even if Google doesn't have the street map loaded), and people regularly use them to get to work, to go to the mall, and to go out drinking after work or whenever.
If you've gone out in a car, and you take a taxi or public transportation back, you'll have to go back and get it later (and if you've been drinking, you have to remember where you parked it). Easier to get someone to drive you back.
That would be my read.
Posted by: Taeyoung at Jul 10, 2007 6:49:40 PM
This sort of service also exists in Riga, Latvia; don't know if it's a "huge success", however.
purely in financial terms, that business could never compete with taxis. I'm afraid it can only succeed in places where leaving your car overnight on the street is risky.
Posted by: Pretinieks at Jul 10, 2007 6:50:42 PM
Or, more succinctly: density. Korean cities (and London) have it; America does not. This service requires it.
Posted by: Alex F at Jul 10, 2007 6:50:44 PM
cheaper/larger manual labor pool?
Posted by: daniel at Jul 10, 2007 7:11:38 PM
I assume that Korea is wildly safer than most of the US, and that's probably a factor, too. You are, while definitionally impaired yourself, giving your car keys and car to a stranger you've never met before. I try not to be someone who freaks out about the potential for crime, but that's not something I'd do in New York City.
Posted by: Michael B Sullivan at Jul 10, 2007 7:32:19 PM
A version of this service exists in the US:
http://jalopnik.com/cars/news/schnockered-napervillians-can-get-a-tow-home-258338.php
Posted by: Klug at Jul 10, 2007 8:53:18 PM
In Asia, getting drunk at a business event generates positive externalities because it signals sincerity. In America, getting drunk is an inconvenient truth drunks try to hide from other people. Hiring replacement drivers may well be a signaling event.
Posted by: Yan Li at Jul 10, 2007 9:03:17 PM
Go to Korea town in NYC and you have the same service. Who says it's not already going on in the US?
Posted by: Dave at Jul 10, 2007 9:09:28 PM
http://www.scooterpatrol.org/
Posted by: Henry at Jul 10, 2007 9:33:38 PM
---If you've gone out in a car, and you take a taxi or public transportation back, you'll have to go back and get it later (and if you've been drinking, you have to remember where you parked it). Easier to get someone to drive you back.
This is the reason drunks drive home. Because in the morning, they need their cars. It's easier for them to drive home drunk than get to the car in the morning, even if you took a cab or a ride home.
But it's being tried here in the Twin Cities. They drive you and your car home. The problem is the cost, which is $50, seems high until you tally up your bar tab or your DUI lawyer bill.
Posted by: anonymous at Jul 10, 2007 10:44:08 PM
They have this in Louisville too. It's been there about 3 years. http://www.cityscoot.com/
Posted by: Aaron at Jul 10, 2007 10:49:33 PM
In Naperville, IL a towtruck company was partnering with local bars to tow you and your car back home. You could schedule your pickup ahead of time if you wanted. Very cool.
http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/napervillesun/business/391127,6_3_NA18_TOW_S1.article
Posted by: Mike at Jul 10, 2007 11:16:06 PM
These Koreans hitch a ride with strangers, late at night, at least 20 times a week! As one who has hitched some 10,000 miles back in my youth, color me quite amazed. Hitching must be dozens of times safer at those truck stops surrounding Seoul than anywhere in NY... for both the driver and the hitch-hiker.
Makes one wonder if NYC and Boston might soon cut their crime rates in half at least one more time. And imagine the social changes that would then evolve! Who wouldn't love to see women feeling they could walk at night as easily as men do?
Should Giuliani and his crime team get some major credit for the hundreds of billions of added value that accrued to homeowners in the NY area during their tenure?
Posted by: dave meleney at Jul 11, 2007 12:27:05 AM
Because it's regulated here. You need a taxi license to charge money to transport people in a car.
Posted by: Brian Moore at Jul 11, 2007 12:28:40 AM
Brian Moore,
I'm not saying you're wrong, but it seems from a couple of posters here that such services exist in the US somewhat, and I think unfortunately pretty much everywhee int he US you need a license to drive a taxi.
Question: do you need a taxi license to drive someone home for money in their own car?
Posted by: happyjuggler0 at Jul 11, 2007 2:09:25 AM
http://www.mydriver.ch/english/
This service is heighly successful in the Zurich, Switzerland area, which is most likely comparable to NYC/Manhattan in terms of "economic prosperity", density etc.
Posted by: Pascal Pensa at Jul 11, 2007 2:59:02 AM
One big difference between the US and Asia. Density of Lawyers. I think this would be a liability issue in the States.
Posted by: Jeff at Jul 11, 2007 4:01:35 AM
Much like the scooter patrol thing in CA, there's some folks running a similar business in Atlanta. I'm surprised the Koreans haven't caught on to this as well: bring a moped. Instead of trying to catch a ride or running to the far-away train stop, simply throw a small (or even foldable, as they do in CA) moped into the back of their car and immediately return to the center of town. The extra wages from being able to make more runs per night would easily pay for the moped.
Anybody have a comment on trunk space availability in S. Korean cars?
Posted by: Alex Ambroz at Jul 11, 2007 7:44:22 AM
What about insurance liability? Here, car insurance depends on who is regularly driving the car. Is it different in the US?
Posted by: Harald Korneliussen at Jul 11, 2007 8:01:46 AM
