Cycling charity urges food delivery companies to check couriers are using legal e-bikes after cyclist left "terrified" by cycle lane collision

Another jealousy-inducing Not Just Bikes video from Holland/ Europe.

https://nebula.tv/ Sounds interesting too ($5 / month) for his algorithm unfriendly videos. 

OTOH between David Hembrow, BicycleDutch and many others you could probably spend the rest of your life relaxing for free to blissfully uneventful videos of everyone in the Netherlands going about their normal lives, sometimes cycling* as part of getting about...  (you could donate if you wanted to BicycleDutch or Jason @ notjustbikes too).

* "cyclist" is still maybe a trigger for too many in the UK for it to be a great translation of "fietser".  On the other hand (wonderfully) it's not just bikes (bicycles) over there.

Oldfatgit wrote:

Takeaways are already facing increased costs with trying to meet reduced plastics. Food trays that were costing pennies an item and made from plastics are being replaced with ones made from cornstarch - at [if I remember right] around 25p per item ... so that's 25p straight on the cost of your burger. These trays still have to go to landfill - just like the 100% recyclable - pizza boxes as once they have been used and had grease / cooking oils / fats in them, they can't be recycled.

Nearly all corn or potato starch items are commercially compostable. Same with cardboard - in Shropshire it gets composted, not recycled.

I'd suggest that the businesses need to either raise their prices, just as they do when any other cost goes up, or change their business model.

All these firms have been happy enough to use non-biodegradable plastics, including the non-recyclable expanded polystyrene, they don't give a toss about landfill, recycling or the environment, they just leave the mountain of rubbish out for the council to deal with.

And their customers do the same. Takeway food packaging is one of the most frequently found items of roadside waste around here.

Add in cans (most often Red Bull, Coke, beer) and bottles (Lucozade, mainstream fizzy pop brands), almost all of which were bought at the local supermarket or chippy as takeaway eat-on-the-move items before being tossed from car windows. It's not hard to see where the problem lies.

Paper, card and specifically newsprint make for better packaging for most takeaways, less sweaty for fried goods.

Oldfatgit wrote:

These trays still have to go to landfill - just like the 100% recyclable - pizza boxes as once they have been used and had grease / cooking oils / fats in them, they can't be recycled.

Yeah but at least they will rot away in weeks unlike the plastic that'll last 1,000 years.

This isn't true. Pizza boes are fine in the cardboard recyclingso long as you've eaten the pizza. And cornstarch trays are fine in the food waste/composting bin. So please stop a) landfilling yours as you are defeating their purpose and b) spreading misinformation.

Probably true. Car driving public will just see them as cyclists (even though they are motorbikes) and Sunak will pick it up in retaliation against the war on motorists.

Shouldn't be that difficult. The delivery riders tend to hang about in groups. There's a large contingent at W Nile St/Gordon Street in Glasgow. I'm sure Polis Scotland could send some of their finest to check the bikes etc. Heck. It wouldn't even be difficult to hang around the various food shops and nail them. 

Indeed. I was nearly taken out (as a pedestrian) on a zebra crossing yesterday: was halfway across when my peripheral vision suggested I should stop. It turned out the (unlit, at night) bike I'd seen some way away was actually doing something like 25mph, the rider wasn't pedalling and made no attempt to slow let alone stop. I could have touched his Deliveroo backpack as he passed me. (Ironically enough, I did have hi-vis on myself).  

Leaving aside the lack of lights and caution at a crossing, there's no way the bike was legal. The delivery riders congregate in a couple of places (near the takeaways funnily enough), and it would be 30 mins work for the police (who often frequent said takeaways) to check a bunch of vehicles and remove the ones that aren't legally allowed on the roads. But they won't, until someone inevitably gets badly hurt. 

ROOTminus1 wrote:

Asking private companies to do the right thing because the Police are under-resourced to actually enforce the law? That's going to fix everything [\s]

As a general principle, I agree with your point here.  But specifically in this business model, the companies should be forced to take more responsibility.