For Delivery Workers in Latin America, Affordable E-Bikes Are a Superpower
reasonstobecheerful.world
reasonstobecheerful.world
These stories are cheerful for capital.
US healthcare is great for the wealthy and those who can afford it. It isn't great for everyone and in general ranks average or poor in some cases.
Until Trump cancels the funding, at which point they suddenly remember it, but only in the context of Trump criticism.
I was turned away from any attempt at diagnosis, because neither facility seemed to know (or care) which department to send me to...
I was ready to sign a blank check - but they seemingly refuse to hurt their stats with potentially unsolvable cases...
Form a reply if you disagree...downvoting doesn't change the fact that even these top facilities end up embarrassing us as a nation...
That's not true for everyone, but I'm not talking about the super-rich either. Just plain middle class.
Public healthcare is FAR more efficient though, I am always amazed how _fast_ doing exams in Sweden are. Like my doctor asked me to take an MRI, put it in the system, scheduled an appointment within a week for me automatically and I was in and out of an MRI clinic in 20 minutes (and I was attended to exactly on time of my appointment) all of that just using my ID card. Bloodwork is usually drop-in so I can just go directly from the doctor without an appointment.
In Brazil with private healthcare I would have to find the MRI clinic myself and see which one was covered by my insurance and try to get an appointment within a reasonable time (by calling multiple clinics). And when getting there I would probably have to wait at least an hour to actually get the MRI done. That is if insurance didn't contest the need for it in the first place. And god forbid I forget to bring the insurance paperwork with me.
Oh yeah, in Brazil I also need to personally go pickup the MRI and personally bring it to the doctor and do another visitation, while in Sweden it is all digital and the doctor just called me on the phone to tell me the results.
My father took ~4 months to schedule a life-saving cancer surgery, insurance kept contesting the surgery. My partners mother in Sweden had cancer surgery approved and done in less than 10 days.
Yes the care in Sweden is usually worse than in Brazil private. I wouldn't say it is so much about doctor quality, more about doctors feeling a bit rushed to see patients. But it is so much faster and easier. Usually you need fast care, not personalized care. And of course a lot of things are just not covered in the Swedish public system (for example some skincare problems) that could be covered in some private in Brazil.
The only thing better about the Brazilian clinics was that some of them had marble floor on the lobby while the Sweden ones usually had concrete floors or tiles.
Overall I prefer the Swedish system much better than the private Brazilian system.
Since I got an e-bike I haven't bought a single month public-transport cards, I maybe take the metro/bus 4-10 times per month (depends a lot on the weather). The bike paid itself several times over since I got it around 2019.
Me and my partner manage to save a lot of money per month, even though we just bought a new, very expensive (because it is close to downtown) apartment with a huge mortgage by just living close to place we go to, not having a car and using the e-bike.
Whatever it is is better than the same thing with loud gas motorbikes being everywhere.
But yeah, that aside, I can definitely sympathize with reducing the number of loud stinking gas motorbikes and scooters. Maybe also give loans to users of gas chainsaws, leaf blowers etc. etc. to replace those too...
Millions of venezuelan migrants are in a similar situation. It is not uncommon to see former university professors with PHDs, lawyers, engineers with decades of experience, etc. to find themselves in another country working as Uber drivers and other types of jobs. Having to migrate really fucking sucks especially if you are old. Consider yourself lucky if you live in a country that is politically and economically stable and you have some sort of net to support you when things don't work out for you.
Society is not ready for the conversation because more often that not, inquisitive people who dare go upstream find out that capitalism - directly or indirectly - is pushing into the river, and have to walk back down to while hanging their head, and continue pulling those they can out of the river.
People who have done some mountain hiking knows that the weight of the backpack should be mostly in the waist, thanks to the waist belt (sorry if I don't use the right term, I've done most my hiking in Spanish ;) ).
I don't know how weight distribution would differ from walking but with some research perhaps they could carry more while staying more comfortable.
That's genuinely impressive, I've done most of my hiking in silence /s
I know what you meant though.
(Aka: why helmet cams are much smoother than any other bike mount)
https://blog.btrax.com/en/files/2019/08/Japanese_food_delive...
- no need to fuss when you mount/dismount your bike, your backpack is already on your shoulders. Speed is key.
- the focus is not on carrying capacity, it's on speedy delivery. There's only so much food in their backpack.
- because of the time waiting for orders / going to the restaurant / going back to a hotspot, most of the time the backpack is actually empty.
- a box on the back of a bike costs money.
Top comment: "This is bad ergonomics for the humans doing delivery"
Reply: "But here's all the reasons why good ergonomics lose money for The Platform"
They are small, nimble, low powered electric scooters with a decent carrying capacity, whose biggest advantage is _cheap_.
If you ask anyone other than the delivery folks, the yulu drivers are a menace, as they break the already fragile equilibrium that is Bengaluru traffic.
Only force behind it seems to be the force of tradition. Creepy to see it holding so much control over even very young people who delivery drivers tend to be.
The inner loop is 100 sq. miles (260 sq. kilometers). Right now (4:30PM on a Monday) drive times and cycling times are comparable (close enough its not really a deciding factor). But bicycling 6-10 miles for each delivery is a good way to get injured. Very few drivers here have any habit of expecting bicycles. When I bicycled to work, I got hit by a car roughly every other week - and that was just one 2 mile ride per day, not multiple 2-10 mile rides per day.
In Helsinki, delivery (of food) seems to be dominated by larger scooters with flat beds between yoke and seat post/rear fender. Maybe because the food delivery boxes are quite large, maybe because they have lots of insulation for winter use ? Maybe because the fat tires on the scooters are more stable on snow & ice ? Just guessing.
They still have the traditional vans though since they get loaded up once in the morning to deliver a ton of large packages.
Or maybe because EV transition is not low hanging fruits at all, idk.
They don't follow any road rules and ride on the footpaths at insane speeds.
They're not actually legal - I believe the law is that if they can go over 17kph without pedalling then they must be registered, have indicators, etc. But nobody seems to do anything about it.
I guess some elderly pedestrians must die before something is done.
But people must have their Ubereats and safety costs money, so the deaths will be justified, I suppose.
Meanwhile elderly drivers regularly have incidents that kill entire families and we shrug and say nothing can be done.
I assume you heard about it, given the confidence of your assertions. So I'm just reminding you.
"In the five-year period from 1 January 2016 to 31 December 2020, there were 14 deaths reported to an Australian State or Territory Coroner where an electric e-micromobility device, including e-bike, e-scooter and electronic self-balancing device, contributed to the death"
"Seven of the 14 deaths were related to e-bikes); 7 deaths were in Queensland and 5 in Victoria (by jurisdiction of investigation); 6 deaths were in the age group of 35–44 years; 5 were females."
<snip>
"Last year the state recorded eight deaths related to personal mobility devices, including e-bikes and e-scooters, quadrupling the number from the previous year, with more than 3000 people presented to 26 emergency departments."
https://www.news.com.au/technology/motoring/unaware-huge-war...
In addition, the reporting is lacking in this area.
"Often, e-bike injuries are grouped with other road users: motorcycles, bicycles and e-scooter therefore making it difficult to track its use, correlates of it and any injury or harm from it."
E-bikes offer additional risk, not alternative risk, because they're ridden on pavements.
Plus cars kill thousands of people every day, and we just sort of accept it as a natural fact of life. Why is a bike going 20kph suddenly a problem?
because the bike can and will use the sidewalk if there's not bike lane.
But the situation is here because we have a new technology (micromobility) that's struggling to find ways of adapting into the current car-centric infrastructure.
Another possibility is we recognize the benefits of this technology and redesign our infrastructure for it. And yes, it's a long, expensive process that requires changing minds (which is probably the hardest thing to do), so it will happen over years or decades.
So I'm not trying to diminish the problems, I'm just offering an alternative framing: clearly there's something behind this technology, and so we should be asking what does a world that incorporates it properly look like?
And there's the excessive reactionary regulation that makes people not comply with the rules.
If you put some reasonable speed limit and look at the other important factors like weight, you won't need to register anything that runs as fast as a child on skates, and can focus on what is really the problem.
So assuming that the safe amount of momentum we're happy with (without registration, etc) is that of a pedal bike rider, if we take into account the extra weight of an e-bike, that seems like a pretty lenient cutoff. Overly lenient in my opinion.
The established road / bike path system here runs so smoothly that changes like this cause problems. People can't seem to improvise. I've also been to Cairo a lot and had a bit of a traffic culture shock. I believe that the chaotic Cairo traffic seems to cope much better with unexpected situations.
HN in a nutshell - you see an article full of first-hand reports of the users and their use case and your immediate reaction is that you know better about what they want and need than they do.
Compound that to e-bikes batteries usually (always?) don't have heating systems to keep them at >0 C, at least you can take them out of the bike when not in use though.
Worse is there are some cities that have both, humid summers and salted streets in winter.
It is humid, but that doesn't seem to translate into especially heavy rain - total precip is less than 900 mm/yr, or somewhere between Minneapolis and Chicago.
Let the clones follow using the same parts, connectors and you could have a world-wide phenomena.
There seems to be a sort of loose standardization around components, that are also churned out by countless factories. Wheels/motors are generally 10" or 12" size. Brake disks have either a certain 3 or 4 bolt pattern. I'm sure the electrics likewise follow some patterns.
I had the thought that it would be fun to 3d scan parts, measure and document some of these scooters, and make a database of suppliers. Then, who knows, start to make the frames and assemble in Bulgaria.
But you really need to be spending time in China to do that, and it wasn't really the right time for me then.
Another thing to note: branded scooters (niu etc.) are becoming more popular, better quality, extensive plastics, and you can probably order parts from the manufacturer.
And it will also be a "cargo" scooter because carrying things.
Typically 2 years only. E-bike batteries last much longer.
Why? Not doubting you, but would love to hear more.
Also recent police raid (they should make them every day) showed that some of the delivery workers were illegal migrants, which shows that companies do little effort to check their documents when hiring.
If you're interested in e-bike delivery in Boston, Massachusetts though, there was a pilot program starting in August of 2024: https://www.boston.gov/departments/transportation/boston-del...
Except for the electricity to charge it, which could either come from clean or dirty power. True about the lack of exhaust though.
Then it leads to the question about the efficiency of generation, distribution, and battery charging vs the distribution and burning of gasoline. Also the weight of the bike. Perhaps someone else has already done the math on this.
This article is written from a very colonial perspective. I wonder if the authors have pondered that.
Oh, but it's greenwashing nonsense, so everyone turns off their critical reasoning skills, and pretends it's a secret virtue that they do so. This place has moved so far away from the hacker ethic that it blows my mind. What a pointless set of discussions and a false social pressure to never think beyond the guidelines set out in the article. Oh and you've got a side wide hall monitor to yell at you if you ever do.
Blech.
What in the hell are you going on about with your criticisms? Here's an idea: Ask these people who buy the e-bikes to do their fairly menial but bill-paying jobs if they'd rather not have at least that option so that you can lecture them about their trapped economic state.
That things should be better and more versatile for more people in the world doesn't mean that shit should be thrown on every small benefit someone can extract from life because it's far from some ideal.
I'm pretty sure though they're not thinking about the welfare of those ex-delivery drivers.
I get the desire to replace all no skill jobs with roombas and drones but some people need them and some even enjoy them.
A friend did over a year of grocery deliveries with a cargo bike recently and outside of the career growth issues he liked it a lot. Physical exercise, lots of free food and decent pay including tips.
Not everyone is a HN minmaxer following the meta to get to the highest posible salary in the shortest possible time. Some are happy with paid rent, food and a weekend visit to the club or w/e.