Hyderabad: Traffic violation cases against delivery boys piling up in city

Hyderabad: Without any adherence to road safety norms, the delivery agents of the food aggregator companies, and bike taxis lead the violation of traffic rules in the city. The delivery executives attached to online apps were found driving on the wrong side, with signal violations, and over-speeding to deliver the food to the customers within the time limit. Nearly Rs 3,000 to Rs 5,000 of challans are pending with each vehicle attached to the various app-based companies.

The delivery agents were hired to deliver the food at the earliest. For the same, they are often seen driving rashly to beat the traffic to reach their delivery point quickly. Following this, the app-based aggregators in the city were fined with multiple traffic challans.

To deliver the food to the customers quickly, most of them resort to rash driving, jumping signals, driving on the wrong side of the road, driving without a helmet, tampering with the vehicle number plate to avoid being penalized among others. These delivery boys violated traffic rules and rode at speed beyond the permissible limit to reach the customer within the stipulated time.

According to Telangana Gig and Platform Workers Union, there are about 60,000 to 65,000 bikes attached with different food aggregators, rental bikes, and other e-commerce apps, and 70 percent of them have multiple challans of thousands of rupees. Each agent would be facing multiple challans, mostly food delivery executives who violate the traffic rules to deliver the food parcel within the time limit as set by the aggregator companies.

The TGPWU state president, Shaik Salauddin said that even after giving several representations to the platform and app companies to get rid of the time limit, there is lack of response from them. Even after the representation from platform workers, police and other higher departments, nothing concrete has been done yet.

"With the fixed time delivery target, several accidents were reported in recent years, and bikers are facing multiple challans, as they are forced to complete the delivery within the deadline or else their rating would be reduced and the app-based ID would be deactivated if it continues," he added.

On an average 700 to 900 delivery boys are roped in by app, either on a part-time or full-time basis in the city. Meanwhile, nearly 2,000 IDs of the delivery executives were deactivated by the aggregator companies for their ratings and various other reasons, he added. ID deactivation is the major reason for them to follow the company's algorithm, or they may again turn unemployed.

Moreover, the motorcyclists attached with the app companies who run bike taxis are also facing similar issues which is leading to huge traffic challan. Salauddin said most of the delivery agents or bike taxi riders wear helmets but the challan was imposed for various other violations. "In bike taxis, the passenger who books the ride, and does not wear a helmet for various reasons, a challan is imposed, and it doubles the amount which is already there."

Moreover, a majority of passengers ask the driver to ride fast to reach their destination quickly. "For receiving good ratings from the passengers, they resort to rash driving and fines are imposed, Over-speeding challans were also imposed on various bike taxi riders," he added.

The popularity of food and other delivery apps has been rising sharply and it has created a new job sector for various unemployed people, especially youth in the country, but their algorithms forced the executives to violate traffic rules, says Salauddin.