A recent investigation by The Telegraph highlighted safety concerns involving e-bike delivery couriers on some of London's busiest roads, including speeding, pavement riding, and phone use while riding. In some cases, riders were reported travelling at speeds of up to 49mph in a 20mph zone.

This is not just a London issue. It reflects a wider challenge across last-mile delivery.

The safety case is clear

According to the investigation, parliamentary data showed 15,477 casualties involving pedal cycles in Britain in 2024, including 85 deaths.

Official Department for Transport data also shows the scale of the issue: in Great Britain in 2024, 82 pedal cyclists were killed, 3,822 were seriously injured, and 10,645 were slightly injured in reported road collisions.

These numbers underline a simple point: rider safety is not a marginal issue. It is a material operational, regulatory, insurance, and reputational risk for the last-mile sector.

Last-mile delivery operates under real pressure

Delivery riders work in complex, fast-moving urban environments. Dense traffic, navigation demands, customer expectations, and earning models can all contribute to pressure on the road.

For platforms, insurers, and operators, the challenge is not simply setting safety policies. It is understanding what is actually happening across thousands of riders and millions of trips.

Without reliable trip-level visibility, safety management can become reactive, driven by incidents, claims, complaints, or media scrutiny after the risk has already materialised.

Regulation matters, but prevention needs visibility

Members of Parliament and campaigners are right to focus on safer roads. Enforcement and regulation have an important role to play, but they cannot scale across every rider, every trip, and every delivery zone.

Platforms need practical tools that help them identify risk earlier, support riders more effectively, and demonstrate to regulators, insurers, and the public that safety is being managed proactively.

How Sentiance helps close the gap

Platforms whose safety teams actively work with riding data to run safety campaigns, reward safe riders, and raise awareness through scores and insights are seeing validated reductions in unsafe behavior and accidents of up to 56%. That is the real value of behavioral intelligence: not just detection, but the ability to act on data in a way that changes outcomes.

To get there, platforms need accurate, continuous trip-level signals. Sentiance delivers these on-device, across an entire fleet, in real time:

• Speeding detection: understand where riders consistently exceed posted limits and target coaching where it is needed most
• Phone handling detection: go beyond simple phone use to identify active screen use mid-trip, with Attention Score providing a clear, actionable measure of distraction risk
• Wrong-way riding detection: surface one of the most preventable risks in urban delivery before it leads to a serious incident
• Swerving and harsh maneuver detection: identify erratic riding patterns that signal elevated risk across a route
• Crash detection for motorbikes: respond quickly when a rider is down and support claims investigation with accurate, on-device data

These are not dashcam flags or manual reports. They are continuous, privacy-first signals that give safety teams the visibility to run smarter programs, coach riders earlier, and measure the impact of every intervention.

From reaction to prevention

The goal is not to punish riders. It is to help platforms identify where risk is highest, intervene earlier, support safer behaviour, and provide evidence that they are taking safety seriously.

Last-mile delivery will continue to grow. The platforms that lead on safety will be those that combine operational scale with better visibility, fairer insights, and proactive rider support.

Waiting for the next collision, claim, or investigation is not a sustainable safety strategy.

Building smarter, safer, privacy-first delivery experiences is.

👉 Read The Telegraph's full investigation here.

Want to learn how Sentiance can help your platform get ahead of risk? Get in touch.

Let's build smarter, safer, privacy-first experiences together.