Recently, the reporter searched civil cases on the China Judgment Documents Network with the keyword "takeaway rider" and found as many as 1,475 related cases, including 630 traffic accidents, 507 personal injury compensation cases, and 440 compensation liability and appraisal cases; There are 342 related contracts, including 286 labor contracts and 256 insurance contracts... It can be seen that the high incidence of accidents and the ambiguity of compensation responsibilities are reflected behind the traffic violations of the takeaway riders.
Traffic violations by takeaway riders are often caused by being "fast". Behind the frequent occurrence of traffic accidents, why are the riders' speed still "slow"?
How to be "slow" next?
The reporter interviewed some takeaway riders, platforms and experts in this regard.
Text / All-media reporter Cheng Yilun of Guangzhou Daily
Three takeaway companies in Sui Rider
Half month traffic violations totaled 8311 times
According to the traffic violation ranking list of food delivery companies released by the Guangzhou Traffic Police, from November 16 to 30, 2021, the number of traffic violations by delivery personnel from Meituan, Ele.me, and Dada, which ranked the top three in terms of traffic violations by food delivery companies A total of 5,026 times; from December 1st to 15th, 2021, the number of traffic violations by the delivery personnel of the three companies mentioned above was as high as 8,311 times.
Riders dare not slow down:
"The speed of giving up is the same as giving up income"
Why can't the speed be slowed down?
During the reporter's investigation, we learned that many takeaway riders still adhere to the concept of "giving up speed is equivalent to giving up income".
It is understood that the monthly income of takeaway riders is basically based on the commission of the delivery fee. If the delivery fee is about 5 yuan for one order, then if 30 orders are delivered a day, the rider can earn 150 yuan; but if the overtime is one minute , usually the rider will be deducted more than half of the delivery fee for a specific order; if the customer chooses to refund the order, the rider needs to bear the full loss.
Clicking on his "performance sheet", the delivery rider Zhou Kang couldn't help sighing.
According to Zhou Kang's mobile phone work interface, since the day he became a takeaway rider in early September last year, he has been working almost every day.
However, apart from the top 30% of his running orders on the Mid-Autumn Festival, he was basically at the middle and lower levels on other days.
"In the beginning, the road conditions were unfamiliar. Later, the road was not fast enough. Naturally, there were fewer orders." In October last year alone, his instant orders exceeded 16 orders, and his reservation orders exceeded 2 orders.
"This means that I ran away for almost half of the month in vain." Zhou Kang said.
In contrast, "old rider" Zheng Jinliang changed his strategy of running orders after changing cars, focusing on "long-distance orders".
Zheng Jinliang told reporters that the volume of short-distance orders is generally large, and the delivery fee is usually between 2 and 5 yuan, but the time is tight, and it takes about 30 to 35 minutes to complete the delivery within 2 kilometers. When the meal is finally delivered, the time is too tight, and the rider can only compress the time on the road.” Zheng Jinliang introduced that when he ran the fastest, the speed was 60km/h, and the feeling was “so fast that the whole person would fly up. ”.
Although the volume of remote orders is relatively small, the relative time is sufficient, and the delivery can be completed within an hour. Usually, a delivery fee of about 8 to 11 yuan can be obtained for one order, "and the possibility of overtime is very low."
"But for those riders who run two or three thousand orders a month, slowing down is a pay cut." Zheng Jinliang predicts that, according to such a running method, although a rider's monthly income can reach more than 20,000 yuan, the daily The working time will not be less than fifteen hours, which means driving fatigue and speeding behind it.
Rider Chen Jie calculated an account for the reporter: if he works 12 hours a day according to the current speed of his modified car at 50~60km/h, he can run 60 orders and earn 300 yuan, but if the speed is reduced as a rule 25km/h, the same working hours, his running orders and income are expected to shrink by 20% to 30%, and he will also face bad reviews from users due to overtime.
Chen Jie said frankly that many colleagues around him are in a wait-and-see state about the registration of electric vehicles. "Most of them are watching how the company will adjust the rules, because registration means removing the modification system or changing the car."
Many emergencies:
Algorithmic rules are difficult to "perfect"
"If the rules of the platform remain unchanged, it is unlikely that the speed of takeaway riders will slow down." A traffic policeman told reporters that as law enforcement officers who often appear at the scene of various traffic violations by takeaway riders, they often bear the greatest pressure.
"But when we chatted with this group, we found that they didn't care about their own safety issues at all, but they couldn't take their own safety to heart when the delivery time was short, and some people had a fluke mentality."
According to the reporter's understanding, at present, under the guidance of the State Administration of Market Supervision and other departments on the algorithm, many food delivery platforms are also continuously optimizing the algorithm and delivery rules of food delivery.
When the reporter interviewed the relevant staff of a certain platform, the other party said that in addition to the estimated time of the model, the current platform's calculation of "estimated arrival time" also includes multiple dimensions such as city characteristics, distribution process accumulation and distance, and three additional calculations. time, and choose the longest time to give to the rider; in addition, in order to avoid other unexpected situations and maintain the relationship between riders and users, the platform also changed "estimated arrival time" to "estimated arrival time" part".
"But this estimated time is not perfect. After all, the takeaway delivery scene is complex and changeable, and there are many emergencies. In addition, many merchants are slow to deliver food, they may have clicked 'food delivery before delivery' This will lead to longer waiting time for riders, and naturally the time on the road will be squeezed." A takeaway rider said that if users look closely, they will find the rider's arrival time displayed on the user's mobile phone, and The arrival time on the rider's phone is different.
During the test, the reporter found that in some orders, it is true that the time on the user's mobile phone is often one to two minutes earlier, "This may be the platform to appease users, but this leads us to run on the road in order not to get bad reviews. ." said the rider.
How to protect the rights of riders?
Expert: The main responsibility of platform enterprises should be clearly defined
According to the "Legal Research Report on the Employment Model of Food Delivery Platforms" released by the domestic non-profit organization and Beijing Zhicheng Legal Aid and Research Center for Migrant Workers (hereinafter referred to as Zhicheng Center), there are currently more than 1.9 million restaurants in the country that include food delivery services. Individual industrial and commercial households, of which the largest number of individual industrial and commercial households registered through the flexible employment platform are suspected takeaway riders, which means that a considerable number of takeaway riders have "became" self-employed.
When the reporter interviewed Xu Miao, a researcher of the center, the other party introduced that the riders on the takeaway platform are divided into three categories: one is the “regular army” that the restaurant employs its own takeaways for delivery or the takeaway platform directly hires or occasionally dispatches labor; The platform or crowdsourcing service company recruits “crowdsourcing riders” who are “free to take orders and work part-time on multiple platforms”; the last one is for the distributor to “subcontract” or “subcontract” the business and cooperate with the flexible employment platform , on the grounds of paying wages and paying less taxes, the "special delivery model" of letting the riders register as individual industrial and commercial households means that the labor risk is eventually passed on to the downstream riders who are individual industrial and commercial households.
In order to better protect the rights and interests of laborers, in July 2021, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and other departments issued the "Guiding Opinions on Safeguarding Labor Security Rights and Interests of Laborers in New Employment Forms"; on September 10, 2021, four national departments specially Interviewed with 10 large-scale platform employment companies such as Meituan and Ele.me; on September 14, 2021, Meituan issued a document saying that it would issue an initiative to 1,103 takeaway partners on September 8, clearly proposing that it is strictly forbidden to induce and force riders Register as an individual industrial and commercial household to avoid the requirement of employment responsibility, and send the "Notice on Prohibition of Requesting Riders to Register as Individual Industrial and Commercial Households" to all partners on the same day.
In this regard, Tong Lihua, director of the Zhicheng Center, also suggested that the main responsibility of platform companies should be clarified.
"The platform is the rule maker of employment. The platform manages and supervises the riders in real time through algorithms and digital management. It is the biggest beneficiary of this employment model and holds all the data, but leaves the main responsibility of employment to others. This is the inconsistency of rights, responsibilities and interests." Tong Lihua believes that the platform can assign relevant responsibilities to other cooperative companies through agreements, but in this process, the platform still has to bear the main responsibility.