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We are a town of around 6,900 people over 30 square miles. There is an army of Amazon vans invading our town. Our local officials and police have no capacity

We are a town of around 6,900 people over 30 square miles. There is an army of Amazon vans invading our town. Our local officials and police have no capacity to deal with this. UPS, USPS and FedEx drivers do not show this level of dysfunction. There are issues, but they are isolated. With Amazon, I fully expect nearly every driver to be a menace.

cameldrv 4y ago
They have the capacity, they just don't have the laws to do the job. If Amazon is effectively forcing their drivers to disobey the law, the solution is simple: have escalating fines for violating the law. The fines for most petty violations are based on the idea that the violation was most likely a mistake or an exceptional circumstance. If the violation is deemed to be just a cost of doing business, make the cost of doing business higher. If Amazon needs to routinely violate the law in order to operate, let them negotiate with the city to come up with a safe and reasonable plan. Otherwise, the city should make it unaffordable to routinely violate the law.
- HDThoreaun 4y ago
  Amazon doesn't employ the drivers though, they're all contractors for a third party firm. Start investigating the driver company and they just shut down and reopen with a new name.
- autoexec 4y ago
  You probably don't even need escalating fines. Just having police stop to warn/ticket the drivers would be enough to throw drivers way behind schedule. The costs of constantly having to hire/train replacements for all the drivers not meeting their crazy metrics would be costly enough for amazon that they'd probably start looking for better options, but I'll admit that would have a much larger cost on the employees when its the employer we want to punish.
prepend 4y ago
> Our local officials and police have no capacity to deal with this. Why not? Even if there’s one sherif have then spend a few hours each week ticketing these vans. Since there’s an army it should be easy to find them breaking laws and ticket them. If they are fined then they will change their behavior. And the upside is if they don’t change their behavior, then they can just hire a new officer who tickets full time. This is a solvable problem if communities want to solve it.

cameldrv 4y ago

They have the capacity, they just don't have the laws to do the job. If Amazon is effectively forcing their drivers to disobey the law, the solution is simple: have escalating fines for violating the law. The fines for most petty violations are based on the idea that the violation was most likely a mistake or an exceptional circumstance. If the violation is deemed to be just a cost of doing business, make the cost of doing business higher. If Amazon needs to routinely violate the law in order to operate, let them negotiate with the city to come up with a safe and reasonable plan. Otherwise, the city should make it unaffordable to routinely violate the law.

HDThoreaun 4y ago
Amazon doesn't employ the drivers though, they're all contractors for a third party firm. Start investigating the driver company and they just shut down and reopen with a new name.
autoexec 4y ago
You probably don't even need escalating fines. Just having police stop to warn/ticket the drivers would be enough to throw drivers way behind schedule. The costs of constantly having to hire/train replacements for all the drivers not meeting their crazy metrics would be costly enough for amazon that they'd probably start looking for better options, but I'll admit that would have a much larger cost on the employees when its the employer we want to punish.

prepend 4y ago

> Our local officials and police have no capacity to deal with this. Why not? Even if there’s one sherif have then spend a few hours each week ticketing these vans. Since there’s an army it should be easy to find them breaking laws and ticket them. If they are fined then they will change their behavior. And the upside is if they don’t change their behavior, then they can just hire a new officer who tickets full time. This is a solvable problem if communities want to solve it.