Harvard's Bapu Jena finds major album release days, like for Taylor Swift, cause measurable spikes in fatal car crashes.
Jena argues smartphones have turned music selection into a lethal distraction, replacing the radio's low-risk dial.
The effect is an example of behavioral spillover, where a cultural event triggers a specific, dangerous real-world action.
Traffic deaths jump 6% on Tax Day, linking psychological stress from looming deadlines to fatal driving errors.
Jena's research shows speeding violations spike on highways near theaters showing *Fast and Furious* movies upon release.
That speeding effect is absent for releases of movies like *Harry Potter* or *The Hunger Games*, according to Jena.
Co-author Christopher Worsham notes we use our smartphones, the most distracting device ever invented, to control in-car entertainment.
Jena previously found mortality rates for high-risk heart patients drop when senior cardiologists are away at conferences.
He argues senior doctors are more likely to perform invasive, risky procedures that can occasionally kill a patient.
Abdi Aziz, a veteran Boston taxi driver, recognized Uber's app-based model as an immediate threat to the protected taxi monopoly system, which relied on scarce city-issued medallions, and chose to join the company as a recruiter.
Aziz argues that once Uber and Lyft amassed a large, captive workforce of drivers - many locked into car loans - they shifted to algorithmically-set variable rates and increased their own share of each fare, a claim the companies dispute by citing higher external costs.
Aziz now leads the App Drivers Union, organizing for collective bargaining, a strategy that mirrors his initial recruitment work but aims to regain leverage for drivers against the ride-hailing platforms.
Aziz sees autonomous vehicle company Waymo as the final, un-joinable threat to driving jobs, stating 'Now Waymo is to kill the drivers.'
The political fight against autonomous vehicles is centered in blue, union-heavy cities like Boston, where hearings have become jobs rallies, with the Teamsters and SEIU pushing for preemptive bans.
A partisan urban fault line is emerging, where red and purple cities like Phoenix welcome autonomous vehicles, while blue strongholds resist them, making the core conflict about the future of work rather than just safety.
Abdi Aziz's career trajectory - first joining the disruptor Uber, then unionizing against it, and now trying to politically outlaw its autonomous successor Waymo - encapsulates the three-phase adaptation of labor to technological disruption.