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A platform worker safety workgroup, formed in March, is studying measures including training, safety technology and data collection, and is expected to conclude its work by end-2026. Separately, three groups can act now.<\/span><\/p>\n Policymakers and unions have a role in addressing the structural conditions of platform work. Questions have been raised in parliament about whether platform incentive structures encourage workers to rush, and MOM\u2019s investigations have not found direct local evidence of this.<\/span><\/p>\n But the pressure workers describe is real even when it is not formally encoded. Initiatives like free monthly defensive riding sessions, offered through driving schools in partnership with the National Delivery Champions Association and platform operators, are a step in the right direction.<\/span><\/p>\n Expanding access to such programmes, and ensuring they are practically accessible to workers who operate on irregular schedules, matters.<\/span><\/p>\n Platform companies have both the reach and the data to make a significant difference. Some already use algorithms to identify risky riding behaviours and prompt rest breaks, and some inform customers of longer wait times during difficult conditions rather than penalising workers.<\/span><\/p>\n More can be done. Soft skills training designed to give workers concrete ways to manage difficult customers and de-escalate impatience deserves more investment, given what our interviews reveal. When a worker feels unable to reassure an agitated customer, the temptation to speed up becomes harder to resist.<\/span><\/p>\n Platforms might also consider moving beyond advice to take breaks, toward stronger interventions such as temporary suspensions of job allocation when the algorithm detects that a worker has been on the road for an extended period without rest.<\/span><\/p>\n Making break time mandatory and paid when risk thresholds are exceeded would go further still, directly addressing the financial pressure that keeps fatigued workers from stopping.<\/span><\/p>\n Finally, there is a role for all of us as patrons. Platform workers operate in an environment shaped, in part, by the expectations of the people they serve. A delay caused by a slow kitchen, heavy rain or a traffic jam is beyond a rider\u2019s control, but whether we penalise them with a low rating is our choice.<\/span><\/p>\n Understanding this, and resisting the impulse to press a driver to go faster, can make a small but meaningful difference to the choices workers feel they must make.\u00a0<\/span>Your fast food or milk tea can wait.<\/span><\/p>\n