Meal & grocery delivery company motorcycle road safety

People riding scooters and motorcycles are too often injured in road collisions in London. While they account for 2.6% of the distance travelled by vehicles in London (2017-2021), sadly they represented almost 27% of those killed or serious injured in collisions.

This figure is far too high and we're working with the meal and grocery delivery Industry to bring about change.

Working with the meal and grocery industry

Together with the meal and grocery industry we're doing all that is reasonably practicable, within our sphere of influence, to mitigate the risks to motorcycle riders.

The approach we have taken on this is aligned with TfL's Safe System approach.

What are we doing?

We met and discussed our shared commitment to road safety with most meal and grocery delivery companies in November 2022. After this, we agreed to 2 key work areas:

Meal and grocery delivery company motorcycle road safety charter

The charter consists of 10 road safety principles which aim to keep motorcycle couriers and other Londoners safe on the roads.

Five firms within the meal and grocery delivery industry agreed to sign this charter to demonstrate our shared commitment to road safety: Deliveroo, Getir, JustEat, Stuart and UberEats.

We will continue to work with other firms in the industry to encourage them to sign up to our charter.

Some companies in the meal and grocery delivery industry employ their couriers, others engage self- employed couriers only, and some use a mixture of employed and self-employed workers.

To accommodate this complexity and make the charter apply to everyone in the industry, the charter refers to both employed and self-employed couriers, with slightly different expectations.

Companies are asked to adopt those parts of the clauses that are applicable to their business model.

Meal and grocery delivery company road safety forum

As part of committing to this shared charter we have asked meal and grocery delivery companies to commit to attending our 6-monthly Meal and grocery delivery company road safety forum.

At the Forum we discuss progress around implementing the charter, share successes and challenges and new ideas to improve road safety. Other third parties may present their findings at the forum to share information they have found when working with couriers

This charter is focused on motorcyclists because they are disproportionately at risk of being killed or seriously injured. However, we understand that meal and grocery couriers also use other modes of transport. We believe that this charter can apply to bicycles, e-bikes, cargo bikes and other vehicles, should companies choose to include them. There is also potential for us to widen the scope of this work in the future.