Our reporter, Wen Lijuan
On the street, a group of takeaway electric vehicles sped by, shuttling between pedestrians and motor vehicles. Riders watched their mobile phones to navigate, racing against time, even speeding, retrograde, and running red lights…
This is the "Rule of Law Daily" reporter recently in Beijing, Haidian District, Chaoyang District, a number of commercial areas to interview the scene.
The rider Guo Kun was one of them. On November 4, the reporter met Guo Kun in a business district in Beijing’s Fourth Ring Road, where he would wait for takeaway orders at noon every day. At this time, it was the peak takeaway period, and he received four takeout orders. From the time of departure to the delivery of all meals, it had to be completed within 50 minutes.
Less than 2 minutes after leaving, Guo Kun got the first takeaway; after a quick transfer, he took another 6 minutes to get the second and third takeaways; then, he ran non-stop to the electric car and switched to the fourth takeaway, but this time it was not smooth. After arriving at the store, he found that the takeaway had not been packed and waited for 4 minutes to get it.
It has been 12 minutes since the order was placed and Guo Kun needs to deliver the four takeaways in the remaining 38 minutes. He ranks the most time-saving delivery order according to the location of each order and the delivery time limit, and one of the time-saving methods is to take shortcuts. He began riding an electric bicycle to accelerate over the dotted line of the road center and drive in the opposite direction, running a red light, and finally delivered the last takeaway to the customer before the deadline.
Throughout the delivery process, Guo Kun ran red lights twice and went retrograde three times, and the whole process exceeded 50 kilometers per hour many times.
"It’s not safe to run a red light, retrograde, and speed, but if you don’t do it, you won’t be able to deliver it on time. Which rider hasn’t run a red light? If the delivery is timed out, the deduction will be more than what you should earn." Guo Kun was helpless.
In fact, this is an "open secret" among riders. With the rapid growth of Internet food ordering, takeout delivery has become more and more convenient for people’s lives, but at the same time, the pursuit of speed has led riders to ignore traffic laws, and the accident rate has been high.
The reporter’s statistics found that the common traffic violations of takeaway riders include running red lights, taking motor vehicle lanes, driving in the opposite direction, speeding, etc. Some riders also have distracted driving behaviors such as looking at their mobile phones and answering calls during driving.
The interviewed experts suggested that to control the traffic violations and chaos of takeaway riders, it is advisable to strengthen supervision, linkage management, and early and strict treatment. It is not only necessary to stop and correct the traffic violations of takeaway riders on the road traffic scene, but also to start with the takeaway platform company. The responsibility for traffic law-abiding is decomposed and implemented to the platform company, which becomes a prerequisite for its operation. Traffic law-abiding is part of the rider’s access threshold, and more importantly, it is necessary to change and standardize the "life-threatening" rules of takeaway food delivery.
Explosive vehicle speeding retrograde
Crossing the road and running a red light
At about 5 pm on November 9, the peak time for takeaway riders to deliver food. At an intersection connecting a shopping mall with many office buildings and residential buildings in Chaoyang District, Beijing, takeaway riders walked through the traffic. The reporter observed that more than 30 riders passed through the intersection within 10 minutes, including as many as 18 people who went retrograde, crossed the road diagonally, and ran red lights.
There are many restaurants around the intersection, dozens of takeaway trucks fill the sidewalk, and pedestrians can only walk along the road. After the riders pick up the order, they ride their electric bicycles directly along the sidewalk and drive into the road.
Rider Li Hong often delivers takeout in this area, with a delivery radius of up to 5 kilometers, and the delivery time of an order varies from 30 to 60 minutes. He told reporters that during peak periods, a rider has six or seven orders on hand at the same time, and the delivery time is almost overlapping. To avoid timeout, the delivery time of each order can only be compressed as much as possible. The system will provide route navigation for each order, but the delivery time is calculated based on the shortest route, which includes the retrograde section. If it is not retrograde, it is impossible to deliver every order on time.
If the order is timed out, the price is high: a certain percentage of the delivery fee is deducted depending on the timeout, sometimes as high as 70%.
"Riders make hard money and have to be fast, so it’s not surprising to run red lights, go retrograde, and speed," Li Hong said.
He Tingting, a part-time rider, wanted to "obey the traffic rules honestly" when she first started the industry, but she repeatedly "seriously arrived late". The most memorable delay for her was on the 30th day of delivery.
That morning, after she woke up, she opened the takeaway order system, set the order range to within 5 kilometers, and received the first order of the day. After receiving the order, she found that the system sent her to a 5.9-kilometer place to pick up a fried chicken chop and deliver it to a company gate about 2.7 kilometers away. The time should not exceed 45 minutes.
It took 35 minutes to reach the shopping mall where the food was picked up, and 5 minutes to find the fried chicken shop on the negative floor of the shopping mall. At this time, the countdown to delivery was only 5 minutes. He Tingting’s new national standard electric car has a maximum speed of 25 kilometers per hour, which cannot be driven very fast. There are still many crossroads in the 5.9-kilometer journey that need to wait for traffic lights. In the end, she timed out 11 minutes, and the freight of 4.8 yuan was deducted by 3.8 yuan, and the overtime fine ratio reached 79%.
Once delivering fried chicken in the urban area, He Tingting ran into a rider who saw her car and said: "Your car can’t do it, it can’t run at all." He Tingting asked him: "How fast can your car go?" The other party replied that the speed was 68 kilometers per hour, and that some riders could reach speeds of more than 85 kilometers per hour after converting the electric car.
It is illegal to modify an electric car, but if it is not changed, although compliance will be timed out. "Riders have to be fast, because they live every day under the urging sound, urged by merchants, urged by customers, and urged by algorithms. We have no choice," He Tingting wrote in her official account, "Stranger Portrait Project" and "Riders Diary".
Traffic accidents are on the rise.
The rights of riders and passers-by are damaged
Riders often speed, retrograde, and run red lights, which directly results in an increasing number of traffic accidents involving riders.
Taking Shanghai as an example, public data show that in the first half of 2019, there were 325 road traffic accidents involving the express delivery industry in Shanghai; from the beginning of 2020 to December, there were more than 400 road traffic accidents involving the express delivery industry.
On the morning of November 10, the reporter witnessed a traffic accident caused by a rider. At about 11 o’clock that day, in a community in Chaoyang District, Beijing, a delivery rider riding an electric car focused on the mobile phone navigation. A passer-by walked in front of him. After the rider reacted, he turned quickly and slammed into the roadside guardrail. The takeaway in the incubator fell to the ground, and the rider also fell onto the road.
He Tingting has also seen many such scenes. She has seen a delivery guy who had two traffic accidents in one day; she has also seen a rider speeding when turning, encountering a car with the same speed, and the person was thrown out after the collision.
For riders, compensation is difficult to achieve after an accident.
The rider, Liu Lin, has a 5cm-long scar on the outside of his arm, which was left after he was hit by a car while delivering food. "The driver had insurance, and the insurance company asked me to provide proof of income to calculate the missed work fee. My monthly income at that time was about 10,000 yuan, but when I asked the platform for proof of income, the platform said it had nothing to do with them, and finally the insurance company paid according to the minimum wage standard," Liu Lin said.
He Tingting saw a photo in the rider’s social group. It was an electric car with a broken front and fell to the ground. It was a rider who took a selfie and sent it to the group after a car accident at the intersection. He rode the electric car straight, and the car that turned on the opposite side did not slow down. The rider braked sharply and collided with the car head-on, and one-third of the electric car’s front was lost. The rider sat on the ground, bruised and saved his life. The solution given by the insurance loss assessor is that if you are in a hurry to go back and make money, you can negotiate a settlement, pay for it quickly, and compensate for two days of missed work, 300 yuan.
The rights and interests cannot be guaranteed, and there are passers-by who were injured by takeaway riders.
Not long ago, Wang Pingping, who works in Beijing, was injured by a delivery rider on her way to start her business. The contract could only be cancelled, and the loss was not small. After the accident, the traffic police awarded the rider full responsibility for the accident, but the rider could not afford it personally. She wanted to find a platform company, but the other party ignored the responsibility.
"In order to avoid injury, I can only try to stay away from the takeaway riders." Wang Pingping sighed.
Zhang Cheng, a Beijing resident, feels the same way. He tries to stay away from takeaway riders when he walks on the road in the evening, but he still often hears takeaway electric cars roaring by his ears. Once, when he was thinking about something while walking, a takeaway electric car came from behind at high speed. By the time he felt a cool breeze in his ear, the car had already run a long way, "with an estimated speed of more than 80 kilometers per hour."
The assessment mechanism works secretly
Data compression delivery time
What is the reason for the takeaway riders to "risk their lives" for speed?
The reporter interviewed a number of riders and found that they were willing to take risks and repeatedly violate traffic regulations, on the one hand, to make more money by taking more orders, and on the other hand, to avoid overtime punishment.
At present, most food delivery platforms implement piece-rate wages, and riders’ income mainly comes from the commission of "running orders", and the more orders they receive, the more they earn. In addition, the status level of riders depends on the rider’s "bee value", which is calculated through multiple dimensions such as attendance, order volume, response rate, and praise rate. The higher the "bee value", the more orders they send. Riders desperately run orders to maintain data and compete for "bee value" because it is closely related to income.
The opposite of data care is data punishment – riders will be deducted for overtime; customers will also be deducted for complaints or bad reviews.
From June this year to the present, Guo Kun has timed out about 50 orders. The specific amount deducted will be determined by his platform according to the time: 10% to 20% of the delivery fee will be deducted for more than 8 minutes; more than 1 hour is a serious overtime, and the deduction ratio will be calculated separately. If you are complained about ordinary overtime, you will be fined more than 50 yuan.
Some riders also pointed out that the platform’s journey algorithm has many unreasonable aspects. For example, the delivery is calculated based on the distance, and the time will not be judged based on the speed of the merchant’s meal and the size of the meal.
Chen Long, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Sociology at Peking University, joined the team of takeaway riders to explore the reasons behind the chaos of riders’ riding. He found that in the process of rider delivery, the platform system collects data from riders, consumers, merchants, and business circles through smartphones and platform software, and applies this data to the management of delivery pricing, rider matching, estimated time, route planning, whole-process monitoring, quantitative assessment, etc. Under this management model, riders are strictly controlled.
In the system setting, the delivery time is the most important indicator, but in recent years, the delivery time of riders has been continuously compressed by the system.
"The average delivery time of orders has dropped from 38 minutes in 2015 to 31 minutes in 2016, and further shortened to 28 minutes in 2017… The continuous compression of time means that the speed of rider flow is accelerating. On the one hand, time compression is the result of technological progress, and on the other hand, it must be achieved through the object of technology – the rider." Chen Long proposed in the paper.
He Tingting also noticed the problem of the platform. In the late experience she remembered the most, the pickup and delivery distance added up to nearly 9 kilometers, and the system only gave her 45 minutes.
"Nearly 9 kilometers away, there are many crossroads, which means that as long as I abide by traffic laws, every time I wait for a traffic light, half a minute or a minute disappears in the countdown. With all kinds of scanning codes and finding directions, I drove the electric car to the maximum speed, and it exceeded 11 minutes." He Tingting said that such orders are not uncommon in ordinary times, appearing in the takeaway system row by row, and there are even orders for pickup and delivery up to 10 kilometers. The rider is required to deliver within 28 minutes, just short of hitting the "midnight flying car" on the public screen.
Dong Lai, a traffic law practice expert and director of Beijing Kaiya Law Firm, has long been concerned about the rights and interests of takeaway riders. He summarizes the reasons for the frequent occurrence of riders’ traffic violations. In addition to the riders’ own poor awareness of traffic rules and lack of safety education, platform dispatch models and algorithms are the main reasons.
"The platform delivery model is unreasonable and the deduction fee is too high. The monthly income of takeaway riders basically depends on the delivery fee. If you get a delivery fee of about 5 yuan for an order, then if you send 30 orders a day, the rider can earn 150 yuan; but if it expires, the rider will usually be deducted a certain proportion of the delivery fee; if the customer refunds the order, the rider needs to bear the full loss." Dong Lachao said that in addition, the platform has a single algorithm, and the estimated arrival time is too short, so the rider has to work hard to run. In order to appease users, the arrival time of the rider displayed on the user’s mobile phone is different from the arrival time on the rider’s mobile phone. The time on the user’s mobile phone is often one to two minutes earlier, which results in the rider having to run on the road in order not to get bad reviews.
In Dong Lachao’s opinion, the merchants who provide takeout are also one of the factors. "Many merchants are slow to eat, and they may have clicked’food preparation is complete ‘before they have eaten, which will lead to longer waiting time for riders, and the time on the road will naturally be squeezed."
Platform rules need to be optimized urgently
Linkage supervision is urgent
It is urgent to balance the contradiction between the "slowdown" and "income" of takeaway riders.
A person in charge of the China Bicycle Association pointed out that compared with ordinary consumers, the electric bicycles of takeaway riders are no longer just means of transportation, but production tools. They rely on the high speed and long mileage of electric bicycles to send orders and complete orders quickly to survive. In the future, it is necessary to develop and launch electric bicycle products suitable for takeaway riders, and constantly improve the relevant standard system.
Dong Lachao suggested that the platform adjust the assessment rules and optimize the algorithm. "At present, the food delivery platform has not established a complete set of mechanisms to encourage food delivery riders to reduce traffic violations, such as rewarding food delivery riders who have not committed traffic violations. We can make full use of big data intelligent analysis to formulate standards to remove the time spent on traffic congestion from the rider’s assessment, and at the same time disregard unreasonable bad reviews."
A number of interviewed experts and industry insiders pointed out that the management of traffic violations and chaos among takeaway riders cannot be separated from linkage supervision, one is the supervision of the platform, and the other is the supervision of riders.
In Dong Lachao’s opinion, it is urgent to improve relevant laws and standardize the legal relationship between platforms and riders.
"At present, the main body of management between riders and platform companies is not clear, and there are complex social management models, such as special delivery model, labor dispatch model, crowdsourcing model, individual model, agency model, etc., resulting in loose and lax management. Therefore, it is necessary to improve legislation to clarify the main body of management. When the rights and interests of riders or platform companies are damaged, they can get social relief with reasonable evidence and law." Dong Lachao said.
He also found that there is almost no compulsory traffic insurance for electric bicycles on the market. Many takeaway riders do not purchase insurance or the insurance amount is low. When a traffic accident occurs, it is very difficult for the injured party to recover compensation from the rider himself or the platform. Therefore, it is recommended to establish "electric vehicle compulsory traffic insurance".
"It is urgent to have a strict access system for the takeaway rider industry, and it is recommended that riders be licensed to work. Identify a social management body to train riders, and after the training, they will be certified to work, and the riders will be assessed every year. If the traffic violations reach a certain number of times, then the following year cannot pass the annual review, and effective supervision will be formed through source management," Dong Lechao said.
Zhang Zhuting, a professor at the Management Cadre College of the Ministry of Transport, believes that traffic violations by takeaway riders are a public safety issue, and the level of public safety governance should be improved, a large security framework should be established to promote the transformation to pre-emptive prevention, and a social governance system should be established.
"Take-away platform companies should effectively assume supervision responsibilities, incorporate rider traffic safety into the safety production system, establish a dual prevention system for safety production risk classification assessment and hidden danger investigation and management, regularly carry out road traffic safety knowledge training for take-away riders, and regularly publish road traffic safety warnings and warning cases, etc., to enhance the traffic safety awareness and rule of law awareness of take-away riders. At the same time, strictly check the means of transportation used by take-away riders, try to distribute vehicles uniformly, and regularly check the safety of transportation tools." Zhang Zhuting suggested that the public security traffic management department can also investigate and collect evidence based on the dynamic cruise equipment of the platform company, and investigate and punish the riders according to law.
As a deliveryman of the takeout service, although Zhang Cheng has some objections to the riders’ speed, he also suggested that customers should have a reasonable expectation of the estimated delivery time of the takeout, fully taking into account the time spent in traffic congestion, and giving riders more understanding. However, the rider’s speed should be regulated, such as how fast it is in the dead of night and how fast it is during the rush hour.
He also proposed an idea of whether "takeaway express rail" or "takeaway special lanes" could be considered in urban transportation planning, "so that there will be no space for pedestrians and vehicles, and the safety of takeaway riders can be better guaranteed."
(The riders in the text are all pseudonyms except He Tingting)
Cartoon/Li Xiaojun
