WASHINGTON — The DC Council is attempting to strike a balance between quick food delivery services and keeping streets safe through a bill that focuses on moped registration.
The Committee on Transportation held its first roundtable hearing to discuss the Motorized Vehicle Registration Accountability Amendment Act of 2024 introduced by Councilmembers Charles Allen and Brianne Nadeau.
"We have an opportunity to better manage the operation of vehicles that helps entrepreneurs earn a living and all of us have safer streets," Nadeau said Thursday in her opening remarks.
During the hearing, councilmembers said their offices have been flooded with calls from concerned District residents complaining about the reckless driving of food delivery drivers on mopeds.
The proposed legislation would require companies that rent out mopeds to register their fleet. Companies that sell mopeds would be required to provide written notice of registration requirements with the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles to potential buyers before selling a vehicle.
District officials say only an estimated 150 mopeds are currently registered, but the number of these vehicles in the streets continues growing.
"There is a large, large number of these vehicles they are not licensed, they are not registered, and so the legislation will bring more of these vehicles to follow these rules to have license and registration," Allen told WUSA9.
Allen says that if a moped is registered, the driver is more likely to be held accountable for dangerous driving because there will be license associated to the vehicle. During the hearing, he pointed out the difficulties of D.C. cameras being able to catch speeding drivers if the mopeds have no tags and they are not registered.
During the hearing, D.C.'s Director of the Department of Motor Vehicles, Gabriel Robinson said the number of people registering mopeds is increasing, and agreed that the proposed legislation would help boost those numbers.
In June, DC Police started cracking down on illegal mopeds and scooters as a part of their "Operation Ride Right" program. Since June 11, police say their officers have impounded 273 scooters, made 81 arrests, and issued 161 notices of infractions.
A police spokesperson said they plan to revisit the program in the future and that currently their team is distributing flyers with information about laws and registration requirements.
During the Thursday morning hearing, Robinson said the police department will start another crackdown on illegal mopeds next week.
Community advocate Abel Núñez who leads the Central American Resource Center says the proposed bill does not directly address dangerous driving.
"The bill is not going after the behavior, right? It's going after a bureaucratic process which is to register. They're focusing on dealers," he told WUSA9 following his testimony.
Núñez, who has been spearheading the issues surrounding migrant food delivery drivers, said the majority of these workers purchase their mopeds informally. He said some have reportedly bought them from mechanic shops outside of the District and that the mopeds themselves are brought from other states.
During his remarks, Núñez urged the council to consider that the newly arrived migrants are used to different driving standards in their own countries of origin and that perhaps they are not informed about the traffic laws in their new home.
"I have to respect the traffic laws where I am. I cannot hold to the excuse, I am not from here, therefore I can drive anyway I want to drive," a D.C. resident said following Núñez's comments.
Núñez says a good start to address the dangerous driving starts with education. "Teach them, and if they then they fail they continue to do bad behavior, then I do think we can come in with enforcement," he added.
Allen said there is an urgency to act on the ongoing issue. He says there is a need to modernize District traffic codes to be up to date with the variety of the vehicles that are now operating in D.C. streets. As the Transportation Chair, he said the roundtable hearing was a good start to the ongoing conversation about street safety.