“ProPublica’s investigation found Amazon escapes responsibility for its role in deaths and serious injuries even though the company keeps a tight grip on how third-party delivery drivers do their jobs”
“WHEN SHE ADDED GABRIELLE’S
NAME to
the chart in her kitchen, Judy Kennedy could picture the annual ritual. At
birthdays she would ask her newest grandchild to stand up straight, heels
against the door frame, so she could mark Gabrielle’s height beside that of her
other granddaughter in the Maine house the family has lived in since the 1800s.
But there are no lines for Gabrielle.
“In January, the 9-month-old was killed when a
driver delivering Amazon.com packages crashed a 26-foot rented box truck into
the back of her mother’s Jeep. The baby was strapped into a car seat in the
back. The delivery driver, a subcontractor ferrying pallets of Amazon boxes
from suburban Boston to five locations in Maine, said in an interview that he
was running late and failed to spot the Jeep in time to avoid the crash. If
Gabrielle’s parents, who have hired lawyers, try to hold Amazon accountable,
they will confront a company that shields itself from liability for accidents
involving the drivers who deliver its billions of packages a year.
“In its
relentless push for e-commerce dominance, Amazon has built a huge logistics
operation in recent years to get more goods to customers’ homes in less and
less time. As it moves to reduce its reliance on legacy carriers like United
Parcel Service, the retailer has created a network of contractors across the
country that allows the company to expand and shrink the delivery force as
needed, while avoiding the costs of taking on permanent employees.
“But Amazon’s
promise of speedy delivery has come at a price, one largely hidden from public
view. An investigation by ProPublica identified more than 60 accidents since
June 2015 involving Amazon delivery contractors that resulted in serious
injuries, including 10 deaths. That tally is most likely a fraction of the
accidents that have occurred: Many people don’t sue, and those who do can’t
always tell when Amazon is involved, court records, police reports and news
accounts show.
“Even as Amazon argues
that it bears no legal responsibility for the human toll, it maintains a tight
grip on how the delivery drivers do their jobs. Their paychecks are signed by hundreds of
companies, but often Amazon directs, through an app, the order of the
deliveries and the route to each destination. Amazon software tracks drivers’
progress, and a dispatcher in an Amazon warehouse can call them if they fall
behind schedule. Amazon requires that 999 out of 1,000 deliveries arrive on
time, according to work orders obtained from contractors with drivers in eight
states.
“Amazon has
repeatedly said in court that it is not responsible for the actions of its
contractors, citing agreements that require them, as one puts it, to ‘defend,
indemnify and hold harmless Amazon.’ Just last week, an operations manager for
Amazon testified in Chicago that it signs such agreements with all its ‘delivery
service partners,’ who assume the liability and the responsibility for legal
costs. The agreements cover ‘all loss or damage to personal property or bodily
harm including death.’
“Amazon
vigilantly enforces the terms of those agreements. In New Jersey, when a
contractor’s insurer failed to pay Amazon’s legal bills in a suit brought by a
physician injured in a crash, Amazon sued to force the insurer to pick up the
tab. In California, the company sued contractors, telling courts that any
damages arising from crashes there should be billed to the delivery companies…
“Amazon,
the world’s largest retailer, is famously secretive about details of its
operations, including the scale of its delivery network. In many of the accidents
involving its contractors, drivers were using cars, trucks and cargo vans that
bore no hint of Amazon’s corporate logo. The truck involved in Gabrielle
Kennedy’s death, for example, was marked only Penske Truck Rental.
“Amazon declined to answer questions about the demands it places
on drivers, the anonymity of delivery vehicles or any requirement that these
contractors indemnify Amazon. The
company said that even one serious incident was too many, but would not
disclose how many people had been killed or seriously injured by drivers
shuttling Amazon packages from warehouses to customers’ homes — the final leg
of the journey, which the company calls the last mile…”
For the entire article, The
Deadly Race: How Amazon Hooked America on Fast Delivery While Avoiding
Responsibility for Crashes by Patricia Callahan (September 5, 2019), click here.
ProPublica is a nonprofit
newsroom that investigates abuses of power. This story was co-published with The
New York Times.
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