Dangerous moped food delivery drivers are zipping around DC breaking traffic laws

WASHINGTON — Lisa Ebel was walking in her Mount Vernon neighborhood last month when she nearly got a delivery she wasn’t expecting.

“I thought he was going to hit me because he was coming right at me,” Ebel said.

She says a moped food delivery driver was zipping down a narrow stretch of sidewalk, against the flow of traffic, and nearly hit her.

It wasn’t the first time.

“I see them drive crazy all the time,” she said.

So did WUSA cameras. Including:

WUSA9 also rolled as a moped delivery driver in Dupont Circle cut in between traffic before blowing through a red light. The rider, who had someone on the back with them, then made an illegal turn while simultaneously running a second red light.

He broke traffic laws five times in 30 seconds.

Outside of the Central American Resource Center in Columbia Heights, WUSA9 spoke with a moped delivery driver on the condition we didn’t identify him.

Through a translator, the center’s executive director Abel Nunez, the driver told us his moped is unregistered, and that he doesn’t have a permit to work in the US, although he said he’s trying to correct that.

“He said about two months he’s been doing it,” Nunez explained. “He said it’s pretty good he makes about $200 a day.”

The driver said he makes upwards of 30 deliveries a day and makes more than a thousand dollars a week.

He added he doesn’t break traffic laws, other than his unregistered moped, but he sees the ones who do.

“He says sometimes it's not their fault,” Nunez said. “They don't want to drive fast but unfortunately, if they go to a restaurant and the order is not ready they have to wait. He says when the food is ready, they can do two or three in an hour but if the restaurant has delays, then they have to wait for the food and then have to contact the customer to make sure that they're not angry because it's not their fault.”

In June, DC Police announced a crackdown dubbed “Operation Ride Right” which will focus on unregistered mopeds and operators who are breaking traffic laws.

DC Councilmember Charles Allen and Councilmember Brianne Nadeau have introduced a bill to strengthen moped licensing and registration requirements in the District. Mopeds with motors 50 ccs or larger are required by law to be registered.

WUSA9 cameras found unregistered mopeds without license plates almost everywhere, making it virtually impossible for operators to be held accountable when they break the law.

“If my sample size of what I'm seeing, I'd say over the last six months, we've seen all of a sudden something very dramatically different happen,” Allen said, referring to an apparent rise in erratic and dangerous moped delivery riding citywide.

Allen added he believes some of the moped’s are being sold or leased “in very predatory ways.”

At the Central American Resource Center, Nunez told us the spike in the sheer number of moped delivery drivers in D.C. is driven in part by migrant buses sent to D.C. in recent years by Republican Governors in border states, flooding the District with undocumented workers trying to make a living.

He said in their home countries, driving mopeds without obeying traffic laws is the norm.

“What we need to be able to do is to translate it to what it means to the U.S. or toward the DMV area so that they're doing it appropriately,” Nunez said. “I think that if we just use enforcement, we're going to take a viable way for them to maintain their families and that they're going to depend more on the city.”

“Then it's either which person do you want? Do you want to teach them how to do it right or do you want them not to work and be dependent on the city for their survival?”

In her Mount Vernon neighborhood, Lisa Ebel doesn’t know what the solution is. She just knows something needs to be done.

“People are gonna get hurt,” she said.  

Allen, who is also head of the Transportation Committee, agrees.

“It is simply a matter of time,” he said. “The number of moped scooter drivers I'm seeing flying through red lights, stop signs, wrong way streets going on sidewalks. It's not an if, it’s a when that we're going to have somebody seriously injured or killed with a collision and a crash like this, and that is going to be tragic.”

“We've got to make sure that we are moving aggressively to create safer environments on our streets.”

Allen said he will hold a special hearing on July 11 to figure out how the District can collectively address the problem.