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For Delivery Workers in Latin America, Affordable E-Bikes Are a Superpower

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Re: For Delivery Workers in Latin America, Affordable E-Bikes Are a Superpower

#71

Post by jollyllama »

Gigachad wrote: post #32
brokenmachine wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Australia too. They don't follow any road rules and ride on the footpaths at insane speeds. They're not actually legal - I believe the law is that if they can go over 17kph without pedalling then they must be registered, have indicators, etc. But nobody seems to do anything about it. I guess some elderly pedestrians must die before something is done.

Nothing is being done because it’s not an actual issue. No one is dying from being hit by delivery bikes. They are just annoying. Meanwhile elderly drivers regularly have incidents that kill entire families and we shrug and say nothing can be done.

If that's the case, then the comparable motor scooters should be deregulated as well.

Re: For Delivery Workers in Latin America, Affordable E-Bikes Are a Superpower

#72

Post by avgDev »

dfxm12 wrote: post #66
rob74 wrote: post #59

So, a 50 year old former "business manager in a government role" is now working as a delivery worker in Colombia, and the fact that the company gave him a loan for an e-bike (they didn't even provide it to him!) is listed as a "reason to be cheerful"?! I swear this is the most depressing thing I read this week so far, and that's something if you consider how depressing the news has been recently...

This sounds like one of those stories in the US about a community crowdsourcing a ton of money for a little girl to get some life saving surgery that would be covered by socialized health care in almost any other country in the planet. These stories are cheerful for capital.

To be fair, stories like this occur in countries with socialized healthcare. People often do come to the US for niche specialized healthcare that is cutting edge.

US healthcare is great for the wealthy and those who can afford it. It isn't great for everyone and in general ranks average or poor in some cases.

Re: For Delivery Workers in Latin America, Affordable E-Bikes Are a Superpower

#73

Post by floatrock »

andrepd wrote: post #42
Fradow wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see numerous reasons why you'd want the backpack rather than a box on the bike for food delivery (may not apply for other deliveries): - no need to fuss when you mount/dismount your bike, your backpack is already on your shoulders. Speed is key. - the focus is not on carrying capacity, it's on speedy delivery. There's only so much food in their backpack. - because of the time waiting for orders / going to the r…

Delivery workers should fuck up their backs because otherwise (1) customers would get their shitty fast food and soggy fries 15s or 20s later, and (2) boxes would eat into the profit of the shareholders.

right? This is the orphan-crushing-machine meme (referenced elsewhere here) playing out live.

Top comment: "This is bad ergonomics for the humans doing delivery"

Reply: "But here's all the reasons why good ergonomics lose money for The Platform"

Re: For Delivery Workers in Latin America, Affordable E-Bikes Are a Superpower

#74

Post by xaldir »

andrepd wrote: post #41
brokenmachine wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Australia too. They don't follow any road rules and ride on the footpaths at insane speeds. They're not actually legal - I believe the law is that if they can go over 17kph without pedalling then they must be registered, have indicators, etc. But nobody seems to do anything about it. I guess some elderly pedestrians must die before something is done.

That is because there are millions of kms of roads for cars and virtually 0 for bikes. Plus cars kill thousands of people every day , and we just sort of accept it as a natural fact of life. Why is a bike going 20kph suddenly a problem?

Moped going 20+kph are regulated need registration and can't ride on sidewalk, there are ebikes weighting more than moped and going faster.

Re: For Delivery Workers in Latin America, Affordable E-Bikes Are a Superpower

#75

Post by hiddencost »

avgDev wrote: post #72
dfxm12 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like one of those stories in the US about a community crowdsourcing a ton of money for a little girl to get some life saving surgery that would be covered by socialized health care in almost any other country in the planet. These stories are cheerful for capital.

To be fair, stories like this occur in countries with socialized healthcare. People often do come to the US for niche specialized healthcare that is cutting edge. US healthcare is great for the wealthy and those who can afford it. It isn't great for everyone and in general ranks average or poor in some cases.

[flagged]

Re: For Delivery Workers in Latin America, Affordable E-Bikes Are a Superpower

#76

Post by jjice »

itishappy wrote: post #61
luma wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you deliver packages in a tropical climate? If the answer is no, maybe you have a different use case than the people in the article. Being able to make it through the day might carry more significance for these users than being able to tear the thing down without any electrical knowledge. HN in a nutshell - you see an article full of first-hand reports of the users and their use case and your immediate reaction is…

I think you're entirely misunderstanding the comment you're replying to here. Of course having a usable bike is critical, but the comment was about reparability and cost of ownership in the long term. A repair shop won't be able to help you fix a bike if there's no parts available. This has nothing to do with the users electrical knowledge.

Agreed - maintainability directly contributes to whether or not something is "affordable" which is one of the center points of the article. Cheap and not repairable can quickly become expensive and wasteful.

Re: For Delivery Workers in Latin America, Affordable E-Bikes Are a Superpower

#77

Post by jjice »

Gigachad wrote: post #32
brokenmachine wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Australia too. They don't follow any road rules and ride on the footpaths at insane speeds. They're not actually legal - I believe the law is that if they can go over 17kph without pedalling then they must be registered, have indicators, etc. But nobody seems to do anything about it. I guess some elderly pedestrians must die before something is done.

Nothing is being done because it’s not an actual issue. No one is dying from being hit by delivery bikes. They are just annoying. Meanwhile elderly drivers regularly have incidents that kill entire families and we shrug and say nothing can be done.

It's not one or the other in my eyes - both can be a problem. When someone whips by me on the sidewalk on an e-bike or moped at 20+ MPH, that's a serious danger as well. I agree that I haven't heard of anyone specifically dying from this, but it's absolutely a public danger.

Re: For Delivery Workers in Latin America, Affordable E-Bikes Are a Superpower

#78

Post by jjice »

rurban wrote: post #55
JKCalhoun wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the scooter is going to be the winner in the U.S. People not used to biking are averse to being unable to sit and have both feet solidly on the ground at a stop. And it will also be a "cargo" scooter because carrying things.

Just that the e-scooter batteries last much shorter than the e-bike batteries. And they won't work in colder temperatures. Typically 2 years only. E-bike batteries last much longer.

Why's that? I have no experience here so I'm confused as to why the batteries would be different. Is it a size thing? Or are they just different tech all together?

Re: For Delivery Workers in Latin America, Affordable E-Bikes Are a Superpower

#79

Post by floatrock »

brokenmachine wrote: post #21
tim333 wrote: post #13

In London e-bikes have basically take over delivery of small stuff. A decade or so ago they tended to use motor scooters but there are a lot less restrictions on e-bikes.

In Australia too. They don't follow any road rules and ride on the footpaths at insane speeds. They're not actually legal - I believe the law is that if they can go over 17kph without pedalling then they must be registered, have indicators, etc. But nobody seems to do anything about it. I guess some elderly pedestrians must die before something is done.

These frustrations are just as real as the resultant medical bills.

But the situation is here because we have a new technology (micromobility) that's struggling to find ways of adapting into the current car-centric infrastructure.

Another possibility is we recognize the benefits of this technology and redesign our infrastructure for it. And yes, it's a long, expensive process that requires changing minds (which is probably the hardest thing to do), so it will happen over years or decades.

So I'm not trying to diminish the problems, I'm just offering an alternative framing: clearly there's something behind this technology, and so we should be asking what does a world that incorporates it properly look like?

Re: For Delivery Workers in Latin America, Affordable E-Bikes Are a Superpower

#80

Post by jtwaleson »

concerned_user wrote: post #36
Yeul wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

E bikes can be used by 15-16 year olds so Dominos uses them a lot here in the Netherlands.

I don't think it is fair to compare Netherlands to other countries like UK or France because Netherlands has a well established culture around bikes and bike lane infrastructure is one of the best in the world, so it will be the last country that will have any issues because of e-bikes.

Well, we (in NL) are used to bikes going mostly the same speed and people in cars and bikes following the rules. With overpowered fat-bikes, it's now much more chaotic than a decade ago.

The established road / bike path system here runs so smoothly that changes like this cause problems. People can't seem to improvise. I've also been to Cairo a lot and had a bit of a traffic culture shock. I believe that the chaotic Cairo traffic seems to cope much better with unexpected situations.

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