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Brazil, road accidents and motorbikes delivering food

2024-09-21 22:20:11, Kosova & Bota CNA

The first months of 2024 have been the deadliest for motorcyclists in Sao Paulo, Brazil's most populous and richest state. On average, almost seven people a day die in motorcycle accidents in Sao Paulo. As VOA correspondent Yan Boechat reports from Sao Paulo, public health and traffic experts say the main reason for this is the rapid expansion of food delivery apps.

Francisco Pereira considers himself a lucky man. On Christmas Day last year, a car hit his motorcycle on a busy street on the outskirts of Sao Paulo. He lost one of his legs the day of the accident and the other a few weeks later, as doctors could not save him.

"The accident happened on December 25. I was coming back from a family party when a car tried to pass me and hit me. I lost one leg instantly," he says.

Despite the tragic ending, Francisco is happy to be alive. In recent years, thousands of young people like him have lost their lives in motorcycle accidents in Sao Paulo. Many of them, like Francisco, worked with food delivery apps.

According to data from Sao Paulo's traffic authority, the past six months have been the deadliest for motorcyclists in Brazil's most populous and richest state. On average, almost seven people a day die in motorcycle accidents in the state, home to more than 20 percent of Brazil's 210 million people. In the last ten years, almost 20,000 motorcyclists have died in Sao Paulo alone.

"We are seeing a greater number of drivers working for the food distribution system without having the proper experience, as this is a way of securing income. On the other hand, consumers are increasingly looking for what they order as fast as possible", says Dr. Linamara Rizzo Battistella from the "Lucy Montoro" Rehabilitation Center.

She is the founder of one of the main rehabilitation centers in Brazil, the "Lucy Montoro" Hospital. She says the expansion of Brazil's delivery market over the past decade is one of the main reasons so many young people are dying on the streets.

"It is clear that we must have protections for workers and penalties for companies that do not control the number of deliveries by their drivers," she says.

Ifood, Brazil's leading food delivery app with $10 billion in gross revenue last year, says there is no data proving a link between the rise in motorcyclist deaths and the expansion of food delivery app services. . The company says that only 0.6 percent of the motorcycles circulating in Brazil work for its services.

A recent study conducted by the Institute for Economic Studies, a Brazilian government organization, shows that between 2016 and 2022, the number of people working as motorcyclists increased by almost 1,200 percent.

Alan Freiria is one of them. He started working as a food deliveryman five years ago.

"I do food delivery, pizza delivery because I earn more. It's a more dangerous job. I've already lost friends, had accidents and fallen, but that's life. It's not something I want to deal with forever," he says.

Alan wants to have a more stable and less dangerous job, but he says that it is difficult to find such a job with the same payment that he secures from distributing food./ VOA