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You Catch More Flies With Honey Than Vinegar: Harm Reduction for Distracted Driving Among Delivery Drivers
A perspective from Wynne Ebner
On October 23, 2023, a motorcycle collided with a Domino’s pizza delivery vehicle in Harnett County, North Carolina. Earlier this year in Charlotte, a 5-year-old boy was struck by a delivery driver while playing outside in his neighborhood. Thankfully, everyone involved in these two accidents survived. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that delivery drivers account for nearly 20% of all occupational fatalities, largely due to car accidents or attacks on drivers. In 2021, being a delivery driver was the sixth most fatal job in the United States, just below occupations such as loggers, hunters, and aircraft pilots. Among this list of high-risk occupations, delivery driving seems like the odd one out.
Recently, as a passenger in a rideshare, I watched my driver check Facebook, FaceTime a friend, and scroll through Reddit– all during the course of my 15-minute ride. As independent contractors, most gig economy delivery drivers have very few enforced regulations around phone use while driving. But are they faced with a uniquely challenging situation: they must constantly look at their phone for directions, to communicate with customers, and to accept new jobs without engaging in any other phone activity. Unable to employ the “out of sight, out of mind,” approach, gig economy workers like UberEats and Amazon drivers are four times as likely to regularly use their smartphone while driving compared to other drivers. Most of the companies that employ delivery drivers, such as Uber, Amazon, and Grubhub, are not doing nearly enough to prioritize the safety of their drivers.
It is the responsibility of companies that employ gig drivers to create policies with the sole aim of supporting delivery drivers in reducing phone use while driving to account for the inherent riskiness of the job. In 2021, Amazon attempted to do this by creating the “Mentor” app that monitors the driving behavior of contracted delivery drivers in the hopes of improving driver safety by measuring and scoring employees’ driving performance each day. Unsurprisingly, drivers felt like the surveillance from Amazon felt “dystopian” and “unjust,” as drivers were punished for app glitches out of their control and for having a poor score. While Mentor did not work as intended, I see value in this type of technology to hold drivers accountable for phone use while driving.
Mentor is similar to a program that my car insurance company, USAA, recently asked me to participate in: USAA SafePilot. SafePilot runs in the background of your phone and is able to detect when you are using it for anything besides navigation. Participants in the pilot program can save up to 30% on their car insurance premium for safe driving. After each drive, my phone sends me a report informing me what percentage of the drive I was using my phone for non-navigation purposes. By seeing these notifications, I am far more aware of my own phone use, causing me to reflect on how I can use my phone less in the future. Having a measurement helps me self-monitor my behavior.
We should use this type of existing technology to reduce phone use by focusing on rewarding drivers who use their phones less rather than punishing drivers for their phone use. Companies that employ gig workers for deliveries: let’s make this change now! With society’s addiction to being online, expectations of zero recreational phone use during their work hours is unrealistic. Instead, you should employ a harm reduction model by incentivizing reduced phone use rather than expecting complete cessation. Work with USAA to develop a new app for employees and contractors to use when they are on the clock. If employees have less than a certain amount of phone use time during their shifts after 6 months or a year, they should then receive a pay increase. Policies that focus on punishing people for using their phone while driving, like Mentor, are extremely challenging to enforce, may eliminate too much of the workforce, and destroy trust with the companies that drivers work for. Additionally, it’s important to ensure that the app only tracks phone use while the person is working to address the controversy and concern around the privacy of the drivers.
Given that many gig workers do not receive healthcare benefits and minimum wage, it is likely that financial incentives would be motivating and effective in behavior change. Supporting delivery drivers by rewarding healthy behaviors makes roads safer for everyone. It can’t wait– there’s too much at stake.
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