By Michael Miller and Ligia Guallpa
The narrative around street safety all too often pits one group against another: Pedestrians and drivers admonish e-bike riders for traffic violations. E-bike riders berate drivers who swerve into the bike lanes.
The reality is this: while some attempt to divide us by how we navigate the city, we are all users of our streets, subject to the whims of those who benefit most from speed and chaos — the app companies. We should know.
As a rabbi who was recently struck by an e-bike rider traveling at high speed in the wrong direction, with surgically implanted leg hardware to prove it, and the executive director of Worker’s Justice Project, which advocates for delivery workers citywide, the expectation is for us to stand in opposition to one another.
We’re going to do better than that. We are united in the belief that to solve the problem of havoc on our streets, we need to look with clear eyes at its root cause: All of us.
We are all addicted to the convenience of touch-of-a-button delivery. Legislation cannot place the onus exclusively on delivery workers with no recognition of the economic environment in which they work.
Today, we stand together in support of innovative City Council legislation that will help bring order to our streets by regulating the third-party delivery companies that prioritize speed to maximize profits.
In the same way that the city regulated rideshare companies when they first came on the market more than a decade ago, the bill offers a new licensing structure for third-party delivery apps, putting the burden on companies who stand to make money from the size and 24-hour nature of our city as well as the craving for near-instant dispatch.
It brings the delivery landscape further into the daylight at long last while protecting workers’ individual rights and safety:
Licensed companies will be required to ensure that delivery workers use legal devices, including by providing them directly to their workers if they need them — since no one wants to spend all day on top of a ticking bomb, or bring one into their family home.
Additionally, companies will be required to ensure that delivery workers complete a safety training course and follow traffic rules — establishing a baseline understanding of expectations so that even those new to our city have the knowledge base they need to succeed.
Crucially, companies will also be required to share trip and other data to ensure compliance — because data is power, and the city can’t manage what it can’t measure. Ultimately it establishes penalties for companies that fail to comply with any of these requirements, with the most extreme scenario including the removal of a license to continue operating in one of the world’s biggest and most dynamic markets.
And we call on the Council to go one step further, equipping workers more fully with the tools to challenge the algorithmic pressures they face by creating rules around deactivation.
Too many workers who slow down, alter routes or refuse orders in dangerous conditions to prioritize safety have been deactivated. That’s unjust, and it adds to the chaos we all feel.
Workers shouldn’t have to choose between their safety and their job. As a city, we shouldn’t have to choose between our safety and quick delivery.
A supplement that guarantees deactivation protections will help workers feel secure in slowing down, bringing the intent of this legislation more fully to bear.
For too long, the apps have operated in a sort of legal gray zone without much oversight, as they chase a buck on the backs of hardworking delivery workers forced to make choices they wouldn’t otherwise make for fear of being locked out, and at great risk to pedestrians and other road users.
This bill will help put an end to that.
Even if it becomes law, there will still be room for law enforcement in this conversation. No one should run red lights or go the wrong direction down a one-way street. But to treat law enforcement as the first and last form of defense undersells the broader landscape.
As representatives of two sides of the same coin, we urge the Council to introduce and pass this proposed legislation to intelligently regulate a growing and vital delivery industry while restoring a sense of safety to pedestrians, riders and drivers alike.
Miller, a rabbi, is the former CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council. Guallpa is the executive director of the Worker’s Justice Project, which launched the Los Deliveristas Unidos campaign in 2020 to protect the rights of NYC’s 65,000 app delivery workers.
New York Jewish Travel Guide
