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Deliveroo rider Holborn pic courtesy Laura LakerIs Deliveroo still letting novice riders loose without lights?
Deliveroo has defended its rider safety and training after a cyclist claimed she was hit by one of its riders cycling at night with no lights and in dark clothing, and sworn at by another.
Last year Deliveroo faced criticism for letting inexperienced riders loose on the streets without lights after a number of its riders were seen riding in the company’s black and blue livery at night without lights, some looking unsteady on their bikes.
One road.cc reader shared an email correspondence with Deliveroo over the two incidents, which took place in February and April. The company says rider safety is its top priority, and that it trains and provides ongoing support to all its delivery staff, but has so far not yet provided a response to either complaint.
Deliveroo criticised for letting inexperienced riders loose without lights
Road.cc reader, Mari Girling, voiced concerns over the standard of riding she has seen among Deliveroo riders, and says she has witnessed “many incidents of bad cycling and motorcycling by [Deliveroo] drivers in Oxford”.
In the most recent incident she describes an altercation with a cyclist wearing Deliveroo livery who, she says “cut me up on the inside while I was cycling in heavy traffic”.
”I said to him, ‘Don't pass me on the inside’,” she says.
“He then matched his speed to mine so that I could not pull in behind or in front of him. I asked him to let me in, and he said F- off. I said ‘Don't swear at me,’ and he said ‘F- OFF’ again.”
In an earlier incident one evening in February, she claims a Deliveroo rider pulled across her path at a junction, and hit her.
She says: “I initially thought he was a motorbike because of the size of [the] black delivery box. He had no lights and was wearing dark clothing.”
She says she stopped at a junction, checked the road was clear, and pulled out.
“At this point [the] delivery cyclist pulled out alongside me, turned across me and rode into me,” she says. “He hit my arm, lower leg and foot. I nearly came off.”
She says after the collision the rider apologised, and then rode off.
“He did not seem at all stable on his bike. I was hurt (although not badly and it did not last) and shaken up.”
She has raised concerns the box can look unstable on some bikes and because it is black, can make the rider hard to spot on the roads at night, at times obscuring a rider’s lights, if they are fitted.
Girling claims she has not yet received a response beyond a brief message, which road.cc has seen, stating the matter was passed to the company’s Driver Management Team, on 8 February.
Deliveroo says it provides safety equipment to its riders, and though it won’t comment on individual cases the company says it investigates each incident reported.
A Deliveroo spokesperson told road.cc: “The safety of our riders, and all others on the roads in which we operate, is our top priority.
“We provide our riders with top quality safety equipment, including helmets and lights.
“Before riding with us, applicants complete a trial session to ensure they ride safely, confidently and at the required standard. Once this standard is met, our riders complete a programme of road safety training, with additional support available throughout their time riding with us.”
“Our training and equipment practices are constantly evolving. We continue to consult with a number of leading road safety organisations in the process of further safety training and equipment development.
“While we do not comment on individual cases, we operate a full customer and rider support service. Through this we work to investigate all sides of each incident reported and resolve all issues brought to our attention by members of the public and riders.”
Laura Laker is a freelance journalist with more than a decade’s experience covering cycling, walking and wheeling (and other means of transport). Beginning her career with road.cc, Laura has also written for national and specialist titles of all stripes. One part of the popular Streets Ahead podcast, she sometimes appears as a talking head on TV and radio, and in real life at conferences and festivals. She is also the author of Potholes and Pavements: a Bumpy Ride on Britain’s National Cycle Network.
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36 comments
I've told numerous Deliveroo riders to ask their boss for some lights when they get back to the office if they are delivering during the night, one rider had lights but hadn't turned them on after completing a delivery so he stopped after I shouted at him.
Most shocking thing I witnessed a deliveroo rider do was to pass me as I was riding along at 19mph. He did jopin the Portway from Bridge Valley Road so carried some speed but I soon showed him how fast a single speed bike with 16 stone of muscle powering it can go.
August now and Deliveroo is still employing novices who have no ideas about road laws, judging by several I saw today.
Seriously folks, to home in on a single company is the same as car drivers homing in on a single type of road user (Lycra-clad middle aged carbon riding cyclists) as being an especial hazard on our roads. I cycle commuted and cycle couriered in London in the suicidal '90's and all the above comments applied to any in-experienced road user. Like football, work the ball not the man. If you complain about white-van man or deliveroo riders they just need to change the color of the vehicle or their name to 'address the problem'. Most of these guys are just like you and me, trying to make a living. Some are arseholes, some are not.
So far as employees or not, doing your own taxes is not part of the self-employment test. Contract work can have any number of clauses in the contract to align the individual's behaviour to the contractees needs, including hours, exclusivity of service, pay rates etc. Just about any courier or piecework delivery driver (and many many IT workers) work under the same 'self employment' rules as the Deliveroo guys. The acid test so far as tax rules go, is there can be no expectation of work... That is you can't turn up on monday morning and expect to be given work to do. This is true of most contract delivery drivers. If there's no delivery, there's no pay.
Having a high financial incentive per drop, is dangerous whether it's a courier or a tipper trucker (one of course is much more dangerous for everyone).
My view is the core problem is liability. Deliveroo probably see this and other concerns as a matter of harm to reputation, rather than something they would ever see legal consequences for.
I'd be 100x more concerned about the lack on insurance (covering you, not just third party), than the lights. Also worth checking if the third party cover common via LCC or CTC includes courier work.
Interesting how their pay structure varies (source: https://deliveroo.co.uk/apply )
London
£7.00/hr + £1.00 per drop + tips
Manchester
Mon-Thu: £6.50/hr + £0.50 per drop + tips
Fri-Sun: £6.50/hr + £1.00 per drop + tips
Brighton
£4.00 per drop + tips
Belfast
Mon-Thu: £6.50/hr + £0.50 per drop + tips - Can get up to 30h a week depending on performance. Lunch and dinner shifts: 5/6pm-9pm & 12pm-14pm. Must be available to work weekends (evenings).
Fri-Sun: £6.00/hr + £1.00 per drop + tips
Cardiff
£6.70/hr + tips
Okay so I'm going to put this out there, I worm for deliveroo, I don't like bar work and I like riding my bike, when I found out about the job people were getting paid and hourly rate of £6.70 + £1 per drop which seemed decent. Now you get paid £4 per drop which if you work a five hour shift means you can make £60. I use specialized tricross and a pair of SeeSense lights which if you've ever see them are painful to look at. I can't say I have a supervisor because that would be a lie, I get sent jobs straight to my phone depending on where I am and how many riders are in the zone. Whilst I wouldn't say it's a perfect system and I do think that lights are a problem for some people, I would say that's more about the lights allowed onto the market these days, personally I would say Knogs should be a minimum standard for lights, it's a decent job for us uni students.
I have no real knowledge of employment law so someone please correct me if i'm wrong.
If your self employed you work the hours you want and do all your tax returns etc etc.
Now if you work for this firm, deliveroo, do you have set hours, do you have a rate of pay and when you deliver do you get paid by the customer, take your cut and hand the rest to the company or does the customer pay deliveroo direct and then they pay you a wage ?
Also if the delivery persons dont fill in a tax return are they leaving themselves open to reprisals from HMRC or do they not get paid enough to cover the tax threshold ?
Yes
Those are the sort of questions HMRC would ask to establish whether you are genuinely self employed, or in fact part of a normal employer/employee relationship. There's some absolute nonsense in play with certain companies, which HMRC or more likely the Department for Work and Pensions will sooner or later clamp down on. Large employers have all kind of responsibilities (pensions, holidays, insurance, duty of care), which they can't magic away with a bit of legal slight of hand.
For deliveroo, the customer pays them, and they then pay the delivery person.
If you don't inform HMRC and do the paperwork, you may be liable for fines whether you earn over the tax threshold or not.
I was just wondering what the insurance situation is for Deliveroo riders. After a little search, I found this over at LFGSS.
So that's a problem, if not the problem.
Deliveroo is another employer attemting to absolve itself of a basic duty of care towards its employees. The "self employed" trick often doesn't stand up when it inevitiably falls under legal examination. Employment law is quite good at applying the duck test (walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's a duck) on the question of whether someone is an employee with regards to liability.
The vast majority of new cars have the system installed that when lighting drops below a certain limit they automatically switch on the lights a bit like street lighting.
Unfortunately a lot of cars that are made abroad use different bulbs to what our outdated laws state should be used hence the brighter lights which are much much better at picking up other road users, such as cyclists.
The ruling on only side lights being used is farcical. They are not good enough / bright enough to pick out debris in the road such as pot holes or to indicate to other road users the presence of the vehicle.
As a cyclist would the users on this forum rather be seen by other vehicles due to brighter lights on the vehicle or would they prefer all the cars to go back to dull bulbs which pick up less ????
There's a Deliveroo moped rider I've seen a few times in Bath who really couldn't give less of a shit. I actually saw him run a red light while eating a banana the other day.
Like lots of Deliveroo moped riders he's still on his L plates. I assume that it's legal to employ learners, but it certainly doesn't seem wise.
The Deliveroo riders aren't much better in Dublin. I was considering going to them for a job and then I could let the other guys know what f*****g idiots they are. A large amount of couriers give cyclists a bad name, swerving dangerously through traffic and breaking red lights. The other thing is they think they're the fastest bike riders around. I once heard a courier refer to himself as "basically a pro cyclist", when in reality they're delivery boys. I always see them in town hanging around smoking like chimneys. You don't hear take away drivers calling themselves professional drivers. So please couriers, stop thinking you're the fastest around when you don't know what a peloton is. In my opinion not one courier in Dublin could hold the wheel of a decent club rider. That's a challenge I'm laying down to any smokey crusty courier in Dublin, get strava, get on your bike and try Stocking Lane to the Featherbeds 7.7km at 5.3%
https://www.strava.com/segments/1094691 — Stocking Lane to Featherbeds - Full Climb
So bikes must use lights for an extra 1/2 hour at each end of the day compared to cars. Seems fair.
Nope, both must put lights on at the same time. Car need headlights on half an hour after / before that however.
Given that most LED lights these days don't conform to UK lighting regulations, would a company that supplied staff with bicycles fitted with such non-regulation lights be in contravention of Health and Safety at Work legislation, regardless of any infringement of lighting regulations by the employee riding at night with such a light?
Fact is, you don't need to pass any tests or have any prior experience to get a job with Deliveroo. They're all self employed, so the company isn't even liable.
Anyone acting as a courier on the roads should have some sort of training...
Street lighting not on in that pic, no need for road lights.
I've seen the deliveroos, trundling round, like big friendly snails, boxes on backs.
Not a problem, helping lower the traffic speed, all good in my book.
Except... that's not how the law works is it?
When the big shiny ball drops below the land you have to turn your lights on. When it comes back you can turn them off. There you go. Simple
That photo looks like it was taken in the daytime, but is used to illustrate a story about delivery riders after dark.
If lights required in hours of darkness as I recall not quite the same thing as sunset, and I would expect all streetlights to be on at those times.
Nope, sunset til sunrise
http://www.cyclinguk.org/cyclists-library/regulations/lighting-regulations
It is - law makes council turn on street lights at sunset. If the street lights are off, the sun is up. Etc etc.
Cycling along Cornwall road, near waterloo and there was a Deliveroo moped coming straight towards me (on the wrong side of the road). I gestured for him to move over, He didn't, so I moved more towards the pavement, to avoid collision, as he shouted 'Fuck-off' as he went past. He'd obviusly just gone through an area blocked off to all but Cyclists. The moped drivers are the worst, I find.
If they are concerned about safety why don't Deliveroo just build some lights and reflectives into the massive backpacks/boxes?
It's always amusing seeing them ride into a coastal headwind whilst they're using he seafront in Brighton! Those black boxes make great sails!
I echo the comments regarding these guys though; utterly terrible behaviour. Deliveroo themselves don't seem to give a shit either when you bring the unsafe riders to their attention. I wonder how a death/serious accident would go down in a health & safety at work type case?
They'd probably just say that their riders are self-employed and that they passed the 1 hour test Deliveroo gave them.
Exactly this.
Except, it's hard to argue that the riders are self-employed when their bike boxes have Deliveroo's logo on it and the riders are riding in Deliveroo's "uniform".
It's clear there's no oversight when you see the sort of logos that the riders feel free to add to their delivery boxes.
"Fuck you" on the back of a delivery box, carried by a "branded" rider is not acceptable in my view - I see this moped rider about twice a week by South Ken station.
The things that make my heart sink when I find one in close proximity to me on my commute:
Addison Lee cabs; scaffolding and vehicle recovery lorries; Deliveroo bikes - it's the sheer unpredictability of them.
I complained to their official twitter shortly after they launched in Nottingham and I saw some of their riders cycling on pavements. I got a placatory response but in the months since I've not seen the standard improve; more likely to be on the pavement than not.
I saw two yesterday without lights past 8pm. One had an enormous box/backpack that was swinging from one side to the other. I worry for these riders.
I don't think I've ever seen one on the road, they always ride up behind me while I'm walking on the pavement. Basically, they do what they want. Not cool Deliveroo
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