Paraphrasing an observation I heard in a podcast some weeks ago:
We were promised little robot butlers in the scifi we read as kids, but what we got was human servants that act like robots.
It's always strange to read these reports from American cities that sound like something out of war-torn countries. Delivery workers grouping together to defend themselves against hordes of bandits, in well-known places, with no police protection? What the ...?
This sort of thing would be unthinkable in central Moscow and most other large European city centres (the only European city I've ever felt unsafe in is Brussels, and that's still quite different from NYC).
Spoiler alert: the murder rate in Russia is 40% higher than in the US, and that's despite the very different gun laws [1][2].
Nothing ruins a good story like facts. That's also why you should always raise before you launch or enter a new market, etc. People are suckers for a story, and our brains are pre-wired to explain phenomena rather than to question them. Once you master that psychology (and manipulation) of people, you'll be better at fundraising - and apparently at journalism as well!
It's an issue in Dublin, Ireland too. Deliveroo riders are attacked and police seem to disregard it as an issue. Then when the riders started making maps describing which areas were dangerous the pearl-clutchers described it as "classist".
The victims themselves here are more or less part of the downtrodden caste. Some of them might not be living in the USA with legal authorization. They probably don't feel like the city is interested in protecting them, and it seems like in some cases they are already familiar with "protecting themselves" in organized groups. So with a lack of political interest in their case, banding together makes perfect sense.
This is nothing new, the South Bronx has always been a notorious crime ridden mess.
I used to hang around some trucking forums and found that in the 70's-80's into the 90's Hunts Point was legendary among truckers as a war zone. From the stories and anecdotes the route between the ports and the expressway was a gauntlet of armed highwaymen. It was so bad truckers would not stop for red lights or stop signs for fear of being hijacked in broad daylight. It was customary to lean on the horn and try to roll through. A few even admitted to illegally carrying a pistol for protection.
Not war-torn, more like lawless wastelands. Cops don't really stop crime, the get their ticket quota and then if they have to follow up on other crime, they may show up and take a report.
Police in these major American cities, like all public sector workers (and especially emergency workers), get paid really well too.
The political system of these major Democrat dominated cities is entirely dysfunctional. The only thing the public sector unions, and their political puppets, offer as a solution, is more social spending:
We’ve recently started deploying expensive e-cargo bikes for our food delivery coop[1] to try to whittle down our carbon footprint and increase efficiency in urban areas. We have a similar problem of trying to protect our delivery assets (though not nearly as bad as the plight of the gig workers in the article given that our workers can count on the coop and also because Montreal is generally safer than NYC).
Our threat vectors are a bit different in that the bikes are more likely to be snatched when the rider is dismounted and in a building for a pickup or delivery. We’ve been experimenting by keeping a GPS in the frame and triggering something akin to a car alarm when the bike starts moving too significantly while the rider’s phone isn’t in the vicinity of the bike.
Our primary challenge has been finding the ideal way to lock the bikes while dismounted. The best chain locks are too unwieldy to use for the pace our couriers move at. Wheel locks were interesting but would end up breaking spokes when couriers would inevitably ride them while still locked. We’re currently giving folding locks a go. Open to suggestions if anyone has ideas or experience with other solutions.
>Our primary challenge has been finding the ideal way to lock the bikes while dismounted. The best chain locks are too unwieldy to use for the pace our couriers move at. Wheel locks were interesting but would end up breaking spokes when couriers would inevitably ride them while still locked. We’re currently giving folding locks a go. Open to suggestions if anyone has ideas or experience with other solutions.
Possibly something like the Velo Guard steering locks? They lock the steering in a fixed position (making the bike impossible to ride).
Crime in Montreal is actually quite a bit higher than in NYC. In 2019, with data from Statistics Canada (for Montreal) and the FBI (for NYC)...
Montreal's violent crime rate (1140 per 100k people) is double that of NYC (571 per 100k people). The property crime rate in Montreal (2,222 per 100k people) is similarly higher than NYC (1,460 per 100k people).
I'm aware of no off the shelf solution, but this does sound like a problem that can be solved with electronics.
The motor controller could do electric braking if the rider's phone isn't in the vicinity of the bike. This would mean you can't push the pedals, but the wheels will still turn without resistance. If you forget to unlock it, you won't break the spokes, and there's no sudden halt, so you can still manually and safely break.
You could still run off with the bike on foot of course. But maybe if the pedals are blocked by the motor, you can use the standard lock without breaking the spokes?
If the delivery industry can properly solve the problem of bike theft it would probably be the best thing it can possibly do for the climate and city life worldwide.
The work of Ela Bhatt in India in the 70s may be relevant. She organized women who did odd jobs like delivering this and mending that, despite having no one entity to negotiate against/with, and created the Self-Employed Women's Association, SEWA, which continues to operate today.
From a systemic perspective (which may run counter to your goals), I believe the best solution, which I know won't soon happen in a nation like the US that values comfort and convenience over health and nature, but it's to return to home cooking over deliveries. While it would decrease these jobs, it wouldn't hurt the economy. People who saved delivery money would still spend it, just not on these dangerous jobs.
It makes sense from a systemic perspective. We say we need immigrants to do the jobs Americans don't want to do, but I believe that view reverses cause and effect. Rather than having job vacancies first and need people second, when people divorced from the actual work see lots of cheap labor, they find ways to use it that no one would choose for themselves.
We once had butchers, grocers, and tailors. Then big box stores drove them out of business and replaced them with slaughterhouses and such, incredibly dangerous jobs increasing the disparity of wealth. I see reversing that trend as helping restore safety and dignity to the work and a middle class to the nation.
My result: I don't think I've ever had something home delivered besides the post office, UPS, and Fedex, which don't have these time limits. Shopping for myself and cooking save time and money, plus I meet and form relationships with my counterparts at the coop, farmers market, and CSAs. I pollute a lot less too, taking two years to fill a load of garbage since I avoid packaging.
> The company has been sued multiple times for worker misclassification, tip theft, and other infractions. It settled three times, avoiding a ruling that could torpedo its business model, and another case is currently in arbitration.
We gotta find some way to stop companies from repeatedly settling the same claims to avoid a ruling against them. The system is set up so they can pay to sweep individual cases under the rug while maintaining the systemic problem.
In an adversarial system like the US has, if the claimant decides to drop the case, there is no case. You need something like a state's AG to get involved.
It is pretty horrific that we live in a society where such stories are considered okay. You can replace the bikes by something else and could easily believe that what is described is Dickens's story about 19th century London.
> I'm curious - why is there no open source solution to replace these apps? If not with full functionality, then at least with 80% of the features?
Who would benefit from that? Delivery companies offer a simple and practical way to process orders and payments. Restaurant chains can and do provide their own in-house delivery services. The added-value is not the software infrastructure but the service that's provided.
What exactly is the value proposition of open-sourcing a platform?
You're asking two different questions: an open source app is not an organization, and the organization does more than zero here (as another commenter said, you need cooperation)
Secondly you suggest a co-op, which could maybe work if this were actually a profitable sector. Currently it's still loss-leading
I have actually thought about this a lot. I think the answer to your actual question (why not?) is obvious: people with the capital+skills to start this up do not have a solid profit motive. People who would benefit from it don't have capital+skills.
However I think setting up something like a worker-owned cooperative to replace various gig economy companies would be a really cool project. Honestly if such a service existed, and my friends continued to use the (cheaper) VC-subsidised option, I'd ostracize them for it.
These applications will 100% be decentralized, but cryptocurrency needs better scalability first. You can't be paying $20 in gas fees to place an order.
Use of the convoy system to protect people crossing the bridge, like WW2 defence against U-Boats? Ingenious, but it's sad that it's become dangerous enough to justify that.
Seems like Gotham is eager to live up to its comic book version. Except in real life you don't get Batman stepping in, you get the mafia. It's easy to see the next step too: these organized protection groups get some members who specialize in being the muscle, and an ambitious leader who'll actually market himself as the protector of the people instead of just a guy with a Facebook page.
The most disappointing thing about this article is the absolute apathy from the NYPD. At this point the police writ large are practically sabotaging their reputation with absolutely no self awareness whatsoever. What are we going to do as a society as it becomes increasingly obvious to every citizen that the police, in fact are not here to protect, NOR to serve?
It's been known since 2005 [1] (with precedent back to the 1980's) that the police have no Constitutional duty to protect citizens from harm, even from a specific, credible, and immediate threat. They could basically do nothing, and as long as their management chain is happy, no problem.
At least in Germany (and France afaik) riders have been fighting towards unionization, better treatment, and even ownership (see: https://kolyma2.coopcycle.org/de/)
Gorillas especially has been hit hard with literal revolt by riders, which let to some pretty amusing press conferences by their CEO.
"For years, bike activists and workers pushed for legalization, though the apps that benefited from them were largely silent. It was only when another group of tech companies — hoping to make scooter-sharing legal — joined the fight that a bill moved forward in Albany."
These workers by and large aren't carrying money worth stealing they are being robbed of expensive e-bikes. If these bikes were configured to become inoperable if they couldn't either phone home or talk to the users device then there would be no point in stealing them because nobody would buy them.
The end user could authorize their own new devices unless they lost access to both devices and info needed to do so and the manufacturer could handle same if and only if you were the original registered owner or ownership had been transferred in a verifiable way.
See why phone theft isn't as big a deal anymore they aren't worth anything if they can't easily be used anywhere.
The other ridiculous conditions are solved by making them threat their employees as employees and pay them a minimum wage for time spent including spent idling + millage.
If this plus vc money eventually exiting makes some portion of the work uneconomical so be it.
"He reported both to the police, but the cases went nowhere, an experience common enough that many workers have concluded calling 911 is a waste of time."
Is so frustrating. The theft of thousands of dollars worth of equipment with the threat of violence in a known location and the police aren't interested?
There are a number of reasons this wouldn't work, especially once the thieves have figured this out. They'll then be incentivised to stop the bike for both the phone and the bike, and before you as the driver were able to remote block both items would have been bricked by the thieves. It's easy to take apart an electric bike, especially the ones that have been customised.
Agreed with the treating of employees properly though, these guys go through the ringer just from regular customers and order systems I can't imagine adding thieves to the mix.
There's still value in it if it's inoperable; the motor and battery are still worth enough to make it worthwhile, and I guess the frame can be repurposed too.
I mean look at cars; just taking the wheels or radio out is already worth the effort. The radio is less viable these days though, since they're built in so more difficult to remove, and there's a lockout if it's disconnected from power (for which you need a code).
I don't believe you can truly make the bike inoperable. Yes, you can make its electronics inoperable but I don't believe you can feasibly make its battery, engine or the mechanics inoperable.
I mean theoretically you could, but not in a safe way.
> The other ridiculous conditions are solved by making them threat their employees as employees and pay them a minimum wage for time spent including spent idling + millage.
Basically, there's not much binding riders to a specific delivery app. Many cities have multiple competing apps that riders relatively easily switch between.
clydethefrog|4 years ago
danuker|4 years ago
For example, there have appeared automated boxes for recipients to pick up packages.
amelius|4 years ago
Step 2: Develop AI to automate the work using data generated in step 1.
Step 3: Convince investors that your AI is close to finished. Use the money to actually build a working version.
Step 4: Fire all the humans.
specialist|4 years ago
tazjin|4 years ago
This sort of thing would be unthinkable in central Moscow and most other large European city centres (the only European city I've ever felt unsafe in is Brussels, and that's still quite different from NYC).
aerosmile|4 years ago
Nothing ruins a good story like facts. That's also why you should always raise before you launch or enter a new market, etc. People are suckers for a story, and our brains are pre-wired to explain phenomena rather than to question them. Once you master that psychology (and manipulation) of people, you'll be better at fundraising - and apparently at journalism as well!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Russia [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States
CalRobert|4 years ago
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/deliveroo...
nerdponx|4 years ago
MisterTea|4 years ago
I used to hang around some trucking forums and found that in the 70's-80's into the 90's Hunts Point was legendary among truckers as a war zone. From the stories and anecdotes the route between the ports and the expressway was a gauntlet of armed highwaymen. It was so bad truckers would not stop for red lights or stop signs for fear of being hijacked in broad daylight. It was customary to lean on the horn and try to roll through. A few even admitted to illegally carrying a pistol for protection.
stagger87|4 years ago
InfiniteRand|4 years ago
downrightmike|4 years ago
redis_mlc|4 years ago
[deleted]
CryptoPunk|4 years ago
The political system of these major Democrat dominated cities is entirely dysfunctional. The only thing the public sector unions, and their political puppets, offer as a solution, is more social spending:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-long...
The US is just ahead of the pack in unraveling.
skocznymroczny|4 years ago
[deleted]
bradleyjg|4 years ago
Gaessaki|4 years ago
Our threat vectors are a bit different in that the bikes are more likely to be snatched when the rider is dismounted and in a building for a pickup or delivery. We’ve been experimenting by keeping a GPS in the frame and triggering something akin to a car alarm when the bike starts moving too significantly while the rider’s phone isn’t in the vicinity of the bike.
Our primary challenge has been finding the ideal way to lock the bikes while dismounted. The best chain locks are too unwieldy to use for the pace our couriers move at. Wheel locks were interesting but would end up breaking spokes when couriers would inevitably ride them while still locked. We’re currently giving folding locks a go. Open to suggestions if anyone has ideas or experience with other solutions.
[1] https://radish.coop
Ichthypresbyter|4 years ago
Possibly something like the Velo Guard steering locks? They lock the steering in a fixed position (making the bike impossible to ride).
https://www.velo-guard.ch/en/
rmah|4 years ago
Crime in Montreal is actually quite a bit higher than in NYC. In 2019, with data from Statistics Canada (for Montreal) and the FBI (for NYC)...
Montreal's violent crime rate (1140 per 100k people) is double that of NYC (571 per 100k people). The property crime rate in Montreal (2,222 per 100k people) is similarly higher than NYC (1,460 per 100k people).
Sources: https://www.areavibes.com/montr%C3%A9al-qc/crime/ and https://www.areavibes.com/new+york-ny/crime/
JackMcMack|4 years ago
The motor controller could do electric braking if the rider's phone isn't in the vicinity of the bike. This would mean you can't push the pedals, but the wheels will still turn without resistance. If you forget to unlock it, you won't break the spokes, and there's no sudden halt, so you can still manually and safely break.
You could still run off with the bike on foot of course. But maybe if the pedals are blocked by the motor, you can use the standard lock without breaking the spokes?
karlkloss|4 years ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs8uyPsDaw0
I think that bike theft should be handled the way that horse theft was handled in the wild west.
Swenrekcah|4 years ago
spodek|4 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ela_Bhatt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_Employed_Women%27s_Associ...
From a systemic perspective (which may run counter to your goals), I believe the best solution, which I know won't soon happen in a nation like the US that values comfort and convenience over health and nature, but it's to return to home cooking over deliveries. While it would decrease these jobs, it wouldn't hurt the economy. People who saved delivery money would still spend it, just not on these dangerous jobs.
It makes sense from a systemic perspective. We say we need immigrants to do the jobs Americans don't want to do, but I believe that view reverses cause and effect. Rather than having job vacancies first and need people second, when people divorced from the actual work see lots of cheap labor, they find ways to use it that no one would choose for themselves.
We once had butchers, grocers, and tailors. Then big box stores drove them out of business and replaced them with slaughterhouses and such, incredibly dangerous jobs increasing the disparity of wealth. I see reversing that trend as helping restore safety and dignity to the work and a middle class to the nation.
My result: I don't think I've ever had something home delivered besides the post office, UPS, and Fedex, which don't have these time limits. Shopping for myself and cooking save time and money, plus I meet and form relationships with my counterparts at the coop, farmers market, and CSAs. I pollute a lot less too, taking two years to fill a load of garbage since I avoid packaging.
sudosysgen|4 years ago
What you're doing is quite interesting as someone else in the Montreal area :)
noja|4 years ago
tonyedgecombe|4 years ago
Not easy to retrofit though.
coremoff|4 years ago
wbobeirne|4 years ago
jakelazaroff|4 years ago
We gotta find some way to stop companies from repeatedly settling the same claims to avoid a ruling against them. The system is set up so they can pay to sweep individual cases under the rug while maintaining the systemic problem.
a2tech|4 years ago
the_snooze|4 years ago
The real innovation is in skirting labor laws and shifting risks/costs to workers.
sega_sai|4 years ago
tantalor|4 years ago
[deleted]
sbacic|4 years ago
The day to day running of the system for each particular market could be handled by an NGO, a cooperative or something of the sort.
jsmith99|4 years ago
d0mr|4 years ago
rualca|4 years ago
Who would benefit from that? Delivery companies offer a simple and practical way to process orders and payments. Restaurant chains can and do provide their own in-house delivery services. The added-value is not the software infrastructure but the service that's provided.
What exactly is the value proposition of open-sourcing a platform?
brundolf|4 years ago
Secondly you suggest a co-op, which could maybe work if this were actually a profitable sector. Currently it's still loss-leading
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
bjackman|4 years ago
However I think setting up something like a worker-owned cooperative to replace various gig economy companies would be a really cool project. Honestly if such a service existed, and my friends continued to use the (cheaper) VC-subsidised option, I'd ostracize them for it.
solnyshok|4 years ago
CryptoPunk|4 years ago
pjc50|4 years ago
nzmsv|4 years ago
joncrane|4 years ago
ryandrake|4 years ago
1: https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-po...
hollerith|4 years ago
awild|4 years ago
Gorillas especially has been hit hard with literal revolt by riders, which let to some pretty amusing press conferences by their CEO.
lixtra|4 years ago
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
dbuder|4 years ago
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
sharmin123|4 years ago
[deleted]
the-dude|4 years ago
[deleted]
TheGigaChad|4 years ago
[deleted]
michaelmrose|4 years ago
The end user could authorize their own new devices unless they lost access to both devices and info needed to do so and the manufacturer could handle same if and only if you were the original registered owner or ownership had been transferred in a verifiable way.
See why phone theft isn't as big a deal anymore they aren't worth anything if they can't easily be used anywhere.
The other ridiculous conditions are solved by making them threat their employees as employees and pay them a minimum wage for time spent including spent idling + millage.
If this plus vc money eventually exiting makes some portion of the work uneconomical so be it.
zelos|4 years ago
"He reported both to the police, but the cases went nowhere, an experience common enough that many workers have concluded calling 911 is a waste of time."
Is so frustrating. The theft of thousands of dollars worth of equipment with the threat of violence in a known location and the police aren't interested?
michaelscott|4 years ago
Agreed with the treating of employees properly though, these guys go through the ringer just from regular customers and order systems I can't imagine adding thieves to the mix.
Cthulhu_|4 years ago
I mean look at cars; just taking the wheels or radio out is already worth the effort. The radio is less viable these days though, since they're built in so more difficult to remove, and there's a lockout if it's disconnected from power (for which you need a code).
praptak|4 years ago
I mean theoretically you could, but not in a safe way.
eru|4 years ago
Compare https://www.idiosyncraticwhisk.com/2019/10/california-wants-... and https://www.idiosyncraticwhisk.com/2019/05/uber-and-wages-in...
Basically, there's not much binding riders to a specific delivery app. Many cities have multiple competing apps that riders relatively easily switch between.