Food Delivery Mopeds Are Out Of Control In Boston

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The city of Boston, Massachusetts is dealing with a scourge of moped riders who ride recklessly. Many of the unregistered mopeds are used for food delivery services which have exploded in popularity over the last few years. Bostonians have been enduring the behavior for some time, but now the local government is taking action to crack down.

Man arrested for parking truck on his own lawn.

According to CBS Boston, which sent camera crews out to observe moped traffic for a few days and shared some interesting footage, the problems include weaving through traffic and riding at high speeds on sidewalks.

One guy who was interviewed said he has to scramble to pull his dog out of the way of the food delivery riders, even though he’s on a footpath and not in the road. We can imagine that would be tiresome and can’t believe nobody has been seriously injured or worse.

The City of Boston sent a formal letter to GrubHub, Uber Eats, DoorDash, and other food delivery companies to warn about its new initiative. In it there’s a warning: “The city will consider your company responsible for continued violations by drivers operating on your behalf.”

Those companies were supposed to provide a rider safety plan by June 7. We wonder how many complied and how many of those plans were written sheerly for compliance.

Is that legally enforceable? We have no idea, but that might be argued in court before too long. If it turns out the city can hold the companies liable, they might change their policies in a hurry or simply pull their services out of Boston.

Ironically, Uber told CBS Boston that a while ago the city pushed the company to urge delivery drivers to switch to two-wheeled vehicles as a way to alleviate traffic congestion in the city. If true, that means the city government had a hand in creating the current problem.

Add this to the list of unintended consequences of government action.

Image via CBS Boston/YouTube