Source: Mothership.sg
Responsibility for safety on roads and footpaths must be from a ground up initiative. Government must provide framework, policies and infrastructure. Companies that use, hire and employ such use of riders and devices must take responsibility of rider’s safety and other road user’s safety too.
Much earlier on before the partial ban, the authorities should have demanded that food delivery companies take charge and manage control of their respective riders by:
- Not allowing riders to work for multiple food delivery companies. They have to only stick and choose one.
- Since they are working for only one company, then the Food delivery company must provide, rent or sell their riders a compliant PMD which is unique in shape and colour. The locked up speed of device cannot be tampered and should be capped at maximum 10 kph. Since most of the delivery distances are less than 5 kilometers away. Meaning 30 minutes for food to be delivered.
- Moreover the uniforms worn on body and unique colour of the PMD device is useful for immediate identification on paths and road. The running mobile app can also track the route, crash (built in phone accelerometer sensor) and speed effectively. Then tracking of any accident or errant riding can be easily accounted for and traced to the owner at that time and place of incident.
- Enforcement then can be swift, accurate and effective. It can be immediate or with one warning before termination of service and riders cannot be moving on to other food delivery companies as the authorities will be responsible for keeping track of errant riders across all the food delivery companies.
Looking back we do hope the new proposal of getting riders to use bicycles or e-bikes will not create another new problem with safety of these riders flooding the road and competing for space and time with cars and heavy vehicles.
We cannot afford more lives getting hurt or lost on our roads by simply trying to solve one issue and pushing the problem down the road, literally.
Keeping our fingers crossed.
