ALBANY – While Mayor Adams focuses on his e-bike speed limit to tame the supposedly “Wild West” streets of the city, the state Senate passed a bill, which is expected to also pass the Assembly next week, requiring food delivery apps to provide insurance for delivery workers.
Senate Finance Chair Liz Krueger (D–Manhattan) said her bill, S1162, fills a key missing piece in the current street safety debate: getting app companies like Uber Eats and Cuomo-supporting DoorDash to deal with any damage caused by their speed-focused logarithm.
The bill would require apps to provide delivery workers with insurance that pays out a maximum of $50,000 per person for basic economic loss to “delivery drivers,” pedestrians, and cyclists who are not delivery drivers.
The estimated 80,000 delivery workers in the city would be eligible regardless of citizenship or immigration status or status as freelance workers, and there would be no deductible.
Krueger, whose district includes the Upper East Side, told Streetsblog her constituents worry “if they get hit by an e-bike, they’ll be on their own when it comes to any medical costs that result.”
“The delivery workers are just doing the best they can to earn a living under conditions set by the app companies,” she added. “Those companies bear the ultimate responsibility, and they should ensure their workers and their vehicles are properly insured like any other company has to.”
The bill actually originated in the Assembly, with Member Robert Carroll (D–Brooklyn). But the Assembly hasn’t passed it.
“I authored this bill because it is time we require delivery apps to take responsibility for keeping delivery workers and pedestrians safe,” he said. “Requiring delivery apps to carry insurance for their bike drivers will incentivize safety over speed and provide a modicum of recompense to those harmed should crashes occur.”
The bill comes as city leadership has been lacking; last year, Mayor Adams sent the Council a plan to regulate app companies, but it did not mention insurance. When that bill didn’t pass, he and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch launched a crackdown on bikes.
Meanwhile, delivery workers are the ones who are most endangered by the app-based delivery industry, according to a 2022 city report.
UberEats did not respond to a request for comment.
Amy’s Albany Addenda
Speaking of Tisch’s criminal crackdown on e-bikes, Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal (D-Manhattan) thinks its “crazy” and “terrible.”
Rosenthal made the comments after talking to Streetsblog about her app insurance bill, which is slightly different from Kruger’s. This one would provide personal injury liability insurance to people injured by a delivery worker. She said her bill is an attempt to create an insurance market where none exists.
It never made it out of committee this year, so it’s the old Dodger cheer for Rosenthal, we’re afraid: “Wait ’til next year.”
To close the circle on the Stop Super Speeders bill (S4045), the state Senate did indeed pass it on its last day in session, but it remains a slightly hollow victory after the bill was watered down so much that it could drench the Sonoran.
Initially, the bill was meant to require speed-limiting devices be put in the cars of people receiving six or more speed-camera or red-light camera tickets in any 12-month period. But as Streetsblog reported, the Senate raised the threshold to 16 tickets (and only speeding tickets, to boot), meaning that a bill that once sought to cover more than 130,000 recidivist speeders will end up covering just 15,000.
Bill sponsor Sen. Andrew Gounardes (D-Bay Ridge) made a passionate speech in defense of his bill, evoking Natasha Saada and her daughters Diana and Deborah, who were killed in March on Ocean Parkway by a recidivist speeder who racked up her 16th speed-camera ticket of the year days before the crash and was driving with a suspended license.
“We’re not taking someone’s car away,” Gounardes said, addressing the frequent and tired critique of laws that hold speeders accountable. “We’re not suspending their license. We can slow the people down and keep people alive.”
The bill passed 44-15, including an “aye” from Sen. Anthony Palumbo (R-Suffolk), who Streetsblog readers will remember as a wavering vote that Gounardes was able to coax one day in the Senate lobby. Every “nay was from a Republican.
The only other speaker was Sen. Steve Chan (R-Bensonhurst), whose victory in November allowed his party to break the Democratic supermajority.
Chan gave a confusing speech saying that the bill is “really punishing a car” and appearing to argue that it didn’t go far enough because super speeders could drive other cars including rentals.
“To address this issue by slowing down the vehicle is not the answer,” he said.
Then he bragged that as a former NYPD cop, he had 5,000 “car stops” in his career — and voted in favor of the bill.
Nonetheless, the fate of “Stop Super Speeders” seems doomed in the Assembly; an Assembly source told Streetsblog that it’s not expected to pass in next week’s rush of votes before the June 17 end of session.
But Darnell Sealy-McCrorey is still pushing. The father of Niyell McCrorey, the 13-year old killed by a speeder in Upper Manhattan last year, will be back in Albany next week stalking the corridors with a moral force.
“I’m counting on our leaders in the state Assembly to move this bill now,” he said after the Senate vote. “No other parents should have to experience my family’s pain.”
Our full Albany Report Card will be out next week.
