Amazon Delivers More than Packages
Online shopping has become a favorite past time of many consumers. For those who are determined not to leave their homes to battle other shoppers and self-checkouts, it’s becoming a reality. You can have everything from groceries to medications delivered within a couple of days. It’s almost a dream come true, especially if you live in a region where things are spread out, or winter weather makes traveling cumbersome.
Amazon has taken advantage of this and grown the home delivery niche by leaps and bounds. However, with demand comes issues with safely supplying products across the country. With the holidays right around the corner, Amazon is putting more drivers on the roadways. What does this mean for the rest of us who still venture out onto the roadways every day? A greater risk of car collisions and accident injuries in the name of Prime delivery.
Is Amazon ignoring its driver safety problems?
Because Amazon’s goal is to get products into customers’ hands as immediately as possible, it may be looking the other way when the rules are broken. Safety issues range from drivers who wouldn’t have passed background checks being given access to sensitive customer information, to being tossed keys to a delivery van that might be packed beyond capacity and off balance. Coupling this with unfamiliar delivery routes and distracted driving creates a serious hazard to anyone around these delivery vans.
In the last 4 years, Amazon delivery drivers have been involved in at least 60 collisions that caused injuries and wrongful deaths. Now that gift-giving season is in full swing, this year the company expects to have 50,000 delivery vehicles dispatched throughout the country to handle the holiday surge. That’s an average of 1,000 delivery drivers per state crammed in with everyday traffic, many of whom aren’t experienced drivers and are being pressured by managers to deliver more packages than are realistically possible.
Because Amazon hires contractors who subcontract out their delivery routes, Amazon itself often finds ways to shake off liability for accidents caused by the pressure to meet deadlines, or risk losing the contract. It’s almost inconceivable given that the company literally controls the movements of the contractors and subcontractors – a key element to being an employee. If Amazon has such control over delivery drivers, even dictating the order packages are delivered, it would seem plausible that they know exactly what’s going on at every step of their operation. It stands to reason, then, that Amazon is willfully having drivers break policy and is sacrificing public safety to continue bolstering their reputation for fast delivery.
Amazon is looking to save face and deflect any implication that they can’t meet the high expectations they have sewn into the online retail industry. The company seems to believe the answer to safety is in route creation. Drivers avoid backing out of neighborhoods and making left turns. These same traffic issues they allegedly avoid for safety also just happen to cut down on drive time.
As online retail sales move closer to becoming on-demand sales, delivery vehicles are going to further crowd roads causing devastating accidents. If you have been injured by a commercial delivery vehicle, you deserve the ability to fully recover. The North Dakota car accident attorneys at Larson Law Firm, P.C. will be with you every step of the way. To schedule your free consultation in our Minot or Bismarck offices, call 701-484-4878, or reach out to us through our contact page today.
Mark Larson is a Certified Civil Trial Specialist and Certified Civil Pre-Trial Specialist focusing on personal injury, car accidents, wrongful death, and oil field claims. Since 1979, Larson Law Firm has served the injured throughout North Dakota. Read more about Mark V. Larson.