Speed over safety? China’s food delivery industry warned over accidents

BEIJING: A scooter driver in a bright blue jacket on a food delivery run dashes across a busy intersection slick with rain, hits a turning car and is hurled along the tarmac in a video posted by Chinese police warning that couriers should slow down.

China’s home delivery boom, powered by an estimated three million couriers, most of them riding quiet electric scooters or boxy three-wheelers, has triggered a surge in road accidents, prompting warnings from police and complaints from drivers who say they feel pressure to put speed before safety.

“Accidents happen all the time at rush hour. I have a friend who was hit by a car and could not work for two months,” said a food courier in Beijing surnamed Zhang, declining to give his full name.

The number of users of China’s online food delivery market, dominated by services backed by technology giants Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Tencent Holdings Ltd, surged 41.6 per cent to 300 million in the first half of 2017, according to a report by the statecontrolled China Internet Network Information Center.

After 76 injuries and deaths involving food delivery drivers in Shanghai were recorded in the first half of 2017 alone, police called in China’s largest food delivery companies in late August to warn them to improve safety standards.

Drivers from China’s two largest food delivery companies, Meituan-Dianping and Ele.me, were responsible for about a quarter of all the incidents, the Shanghai police said.

The news sparked a countrywide reaction as city police and state media came out to chastise the industry for accidents.

Police in the eastern city of Nanjing met with food delivery companies on Sept 20 after couriers were involved in more than 3,000 accidents in the first half of 2017, over 90 per cent of which were deemed their fault, state media reported.

The official Legal Daily urged authorities to ‘mobilise the masses’ to use phone cameras to catch offenders and punish their employers, identified by distinctively coloured uniforms.

A spokesman for Meituan, whose drivers wear a fluorescent yellow, said that the company has safety training for drivers and conducted more than 300 driver training courses in July.

He said there was a 13.6 per cent drop in traffic incidents in the following month.

A spokeswoman for Ele. me said it tells drivers that “safety is first, speed is second” and that the company recently launched a system to track traffic violations by drivers, as well as offering rewards to onlookers who report incidents. — Reuters