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“Vast majority” of seized e-bikes are being used by delivery riders – but what are delivery apps actually doing to ensure safety?

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Alex Bowden's picture

Alex Bowden

Alex has been editor of ebiketips since 2021, switching to a world with motors after seven years working on sister site road.cc, where he contributed news, reviews and the occasional feature. These days he combines his road riding with electric bike testing and a dash of ongoing cricket writing (his first book's due out in 2025).

4 comments

1 month 3 weeks ago

The Deliveroo managers can't be looking too hard at who they're employing. I've seen many, many Deliveroo riders on bikes with big motors and numerous batteries attached and that they don't have to pedal.

1 month 3 weeks ago

This article is missing something. 

If you have no right to work in the UK you can rent an account and a bike from somebody. They will then take a significant portion of your earnings and pay you something.

1 month 3 weeks ago

Ultimately all this results in is more people who either can't work anymore or in the case of a percentage whom are low wage workers not delivery riders losing the current job they had on top of paying a fine. Again if retailers were responsible in the first place this includes independent retailers on eBay/Amazon then this wouldn't happen. My only irk in all of this is it's the end user who gets punished the retailer is still free to carry on profiting. Gig delivery groups ultimately don't care about the worker and Americanisation of the work is disposable is the apparent toxic norm?

1 month 3 weeks ago

It's a competitive marketplace. Firms have a choice - compete on equal terms, or let the competition eat their lunch. So it's a pious hope that any one company will voluntarily not cut the corners that their competitors are routinely allowed to get away with. And even if there was such a virtuous company, they would not be around for long, so it's back to the status quo but with one less company in the market.

The government have to set the rules, the police and the courts have to enforce them or exact penalties that outweigh the benefit of non-compliance.

Everything else is just futile handwringing.