Uber Eats Offers Insurance to Couriers

May 28, 2019, Kitchener, Ontario

Posted by: Robert Deutschmann, Personal Injury Lawyer

The issue of insurance for bicycle delivery drivers has been a hot topic lately. There are three popular food delivery apps in Ontario and delivery people for all of them have been complaining about the lack of insurance coverage for injuries sustained on the job. Uber Eats Ontario has announced they will now be covering their delivery personnel with two forms of coverage. Foodora and Skip the Dishes already offered some sort of coverage for their delivery people.

Many bike couriers are injured on the job either in car accidents, or in bicycle accidents and they feel that the benefit coverage is inadequate oftentimes. Uber Eats Ontario has announced that Bike, ebike, e-scooter and pedestrian delivery people in their service will now be insured. They will be required to pay premiums to the Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) for the coverage.  In addition to WSIB coverage, the delivery people will also be covered under accident insurance.

Delivery people have been regularly injured in accidents ranging from being doored by car drivers to falling off their bikes. If they were injured in an accident involving a car they may have had some access to insurance benefits, but often they had no benefits at all and were forced to pay for rehab out of their own pockets and to absorb the loss of pay themselves.

The new Uber Eats coverage will ensure that couriers on bikes, e-bikes, scooters and on foo will have accidental death and dismemberment, permanent and total disability, and accidental medical reimbursement if they are injured while on a delivery and that the benefits will be retroactive to April 1, 2019. WSIB generally covers lost wages on top of this.

About Deutschmann Law

Deutschmann Law serves South-Western Ontario with offices in Kitchener-Waterloo, Cambridge, Woodstock, Brantford, Stratford and Ayr. The law practice of Robert Deutschmann focuses almost exclusively in personal injury and disability insurance matters. For more information, please visit www.deutschmannlaw.com or call us at 1-519-742-7774.

It is important that you review your accident benefit file with one of our experienced personal injury / car accident lawyers to ensure that you obtain access to all your benefits which include, but are limited to, things like physiotherapy, income replacement benefits, vocational retraining and home modifications.