Common Causes for Food Delivery App Accidents in Hackensack

You’re walking in the crosswalk, and a car hits you— and your eyes spot the UberEats logo on the car as you fall. You’re driving and, suddenly, out of nowhere, the side of a car drifts from its lane, smashes into your side, and you see the DoorDash logo.

The statistics don’t lie: as one headline last year put it, “Traffic deaths on New Jersey roads reach a 15-yeah-high.” App-based food delivery is also reaching new heights. Unfortunately, when you add these two things together, we’re seeing more and more food delivery app accidents.

Who are the major players in the food delivery app world?

• GrubHub
• Postmates
• UberEats
• DoorDash

What do these four competing companies have in common? They all deliver food by relying on gig workers, independent contractors and other non-union employees to deliver food fast. Unfortunately, these companies often do so by cutting costs, and cutting corners, which lead to food delivery app accidents.

So, what are the Common Causes for Food Delivery App Accidents in Hackensack?

• Speed: Drivers recklessly speeding at speed limits way above residential area speed limits to squeeze in as many deliveries as they can in their shift, as gig workers often depend upon tips.

• Fatigue: Drivers often drive for more than one company in a single night and overload their days and nights with too many shifts. While this may mean more profits for them and the companies, it leads to sleep drivers, which we all know leads to car crashes and worse.

• Distracted driving: Checking their smartphones to see the next delivery address, texting their friends, posting online— by now we’ve seen the dangers of distracted driving, which only goes up when people are tired and make poor decisions.

• Neglecting right of way laws: In their efforts to get to so many restaurants and homes as fast as they can, food delivery drivers sometimes fail to follow stop signs, yield signs, traffic lights— all commonsense driving techniques that establish right of way and safe driving.

• Bad weather: Food delivery usage increases in poor weather, which makes sense— people don’t want to leave their house during rain, ice, snow or the like. However, this bad weather makes it less safe to drive, which results in more food delivery accidents.

• GPS reliance: Gone are the days of paper maps, yet if a driver’s watching the roads of Google Maps or Apple Maps and not the actual roads in front of them, this often results in an accident. And often these food delivery drivers are driving to places they’ve never been before.

• Inexperience: To cut costs, the four companies listed above often hire young and inexperienced drivers to deliver food. Not having logged a lot of hours on the road often results in more accidents; in fact, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, young drivers have the highest crash statistics, making up approximately 8.5% of drivers in fatal accidents and 12.6% of drivers in all crashes.

• Alcohol and drug use: Sometimes these food delivery drivers are driving drunk, and sometimes they’re driving high on marijuana; tragically sometimes these companies have allegedly hired drivers with a history of convicted drunk driving (as this article demonstrates).

If you or someone you know has been injured in a food delivery app accident, immediately contact the experienced food deliver accident lawyers at the O’Cathain Law Group Personal Injury Law Department to set up a free consultation. Together we can help you Move Forward.