Carter Zinn
His firm publishes the only rideshare page on this site whose argument is that the numbers cannot be trusted. It names the CPUC, SFMTA, DataSF, SWITRS and UC Berkeley's TIMS, explains what each can and cannot show, and states outright that no publicly available count of Uber and Lyft crashes specific to San Francisco exists. He founded the firm after acting as his own lawyer in his own bicycle crash.
The bar record
We read Carter Zinn in the State Bar of California’s licensee search. California publishes more history than most registers: a bar number, a dated status timeline, and administrative as well as disciplinary actions.
California is the one register that tells you it removes its own history. Above the status table, every record carries this: some administrative suspensions are subject to automatic removal from the attorney profile page pursuant to the State Bar’s policy on removal of administrative actions ... administrative suspensions that meet the criteria in that policy would not be displayed below.
Administrative suspensions are not discipline — they follow from things like unpaid fees or missed continuing education. But the sentence still means what it says. A timeline showing nothing is a timeline showing nothing that the State Bar currently displays, and we are not going to write “never suspended” when the register reserves the right to have taken an entry down. No other register on this site says this about itself.
And it does not check what the lawyer tells it. Where a record carries practice areas, the State Bar prints a warning next to them: it does not verify the accuracy of this content and makes no warranties regarding experience or competence in practice areas. Eleven of the twelve lawyers on our San Francisco page left that block empty altogether, so for most of them the register holds a name, a number, an address and a status — and nothing about what they actually do.
What the record shows
The page is titled San Francisco Rideshare Accident Statistics and its central finding is a negative one: “There is no publicly available count of Uber and Lyft crashes specific to San Francisco.” It works through CPUC annual reports, SFMTA and DataSF, and SWITRS via UC Berkeley’s TIMS, and explains why each fails to isolate rideshare involvement.Verified
It goes further and audits the companies’ own filings, citing an SFCTA analysis of 2020 CPUC reports: that Lyft reported only 36% of required public data against Uber’s 99.99%, and that Lyft’s own report gave two trip totals differing by 49.7 million. It then says directly that the two companies’ figures are not comparable.Verified
This is the argument this site exists to make, published by a firm with a commercial reason to do the opposite. We have not verified its figures and do not reprint them; what we can report is that the page tells readers the data is unreliable rather than leaning on it.Verified
He says he founded the firm in 2003 using the proceeds of his own bicycle accident case, which he handled himself.Verified
What the firm says
He says he took a B.A. at Williams College in 1988, began at Harvard Law School, and completed his J.D. at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall in 1999 after taking leave for a family member’s medical needs.Reported
He says he began at Heller Ehrman LLP before moving to Levy Ram & Olson, and has been chosen a Super Lawyer since 2010 and a Rising Star in 2009.Reported
He says he served three years on the Board of Governors of Consumer Attorneys of California, is an adjunct faculty member at UC Hastings teaching medical malpractice litigation, and chaired the City of Mill Valley Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission.Reported
Rideshare
What we haven’t checked
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