Member

This is not a marginal problem; it is a systemic one and it is growing every day. We must be clear about the root cause. This is not simply about individual riders behaving badly. It is about the business model run by Deliveroo, Just Eat, Uber Eats and others that rewards speed above safety. It is a model that pushes riders—many of them young, nearly all of them recent immigrants and many of them economically vulnerable—to take risks because their pay depends on it. The Times reported that many riders are using illegal and risky e-bikes, often modified to exceed legal speed limits, and that black market account rental allows unvetted riders to operate with no checks at all. As we heard in Committee, these are not isolated incidents; they are symptoms of a system in which these food platform companies benefit from fast food deliveries while the risks are borne by the public.