Messenger Institute for Media Accuracy

Messenger Institute
for Media Accuracy

Bike messengers’ ranks shrinking - San Francisco Examiner, October 10, 2005

Cycle Courier - Australian Cyclist, October 2005

Bob Byers, 58: Bike courier, outlaw - Toronto Star, September 26, 2005

Solidariity Forever? - Globe & Mail, September 17, 2005

Courier unions go wheel to wheel - Montreal Gazette, September 7, 2005

Opponents suspect Canada Post’s hand behind unionization drive - Montreal Gazette, September 7, 2005

The fight is on: bike vs. Internet - Montreal Gazette, September 06, 2005

Sweatshop on wheels - Now Magazine, August 25, 2005

Pedaling prom is a ride on wild side - Chicago Tribune, August 23, 2005

Cycling puts healthy Londoners on road to early heart disease

This is exactly what Toronto Hoof & Cycle warned about six years ago in Choking us to death. The solution is not to move cyclists it's to decrease and eventually eliminate emissions.

There have been studies that show pollution levels "higher" inside cars than the ambient air quality outside but those studies took the outside measurements at a fixed point 50m-100m away from any road or vehicle. Cyclists ride directly in traffic not 50m to 100m away.

There are many reasons messengers are so at risk:

Proximity - the closer you are to the source the greater the exposure
Duration - the more time you spend in pollution, the greater the risk
Rate of breathing - the higher your rate of breathing the more particulates you bring into your lungs and blood. (This is one of the main reason children are more at risk.
Long term frequency - once you have damaged your lungs and heart they become more sensitive to the effects of pollution to the point that it can cause a heart attack even many days after exposure.

Cycling puts healthy Londoners on road to early heart disease - Sunday Times, August 22, 2005

more...

Bicycle couriers bring unique service to Boise - Idaho Statesman, August 18, 2005

Gritty Outlaw Bike Race Mellows - Bremerton Sun, August 12, 2005

Police officer vs. bike messenger - San Francisco Chronicle, August 11, 2005

Why was I stopped - Socialist Worker, August 13, 2005

There Goes the Neighborhood - Minneapolis City Pages, August 10, 2005

Blood, Sweat, and One Gear - Baltimore City Paper, July 27, 2005

In a shocking article from the official publication of the Messenger Courier Association of the Americas (MCAA) child labour is portrayed as a positive business practice. The MCAA is the courier industry organization representing courier company owners. The article is written by a lawyer for Contractor Management Services, a company similar to NICA, which helps employers to disguise their employees as independent contractors.

The MCAA refers to the employment of child labour and exploitation of children as merely using "young entrepreneurs" and "enterprising young men" as independent contractors. These "young men" were as young as 10 years old, forced to work all night and often robbed.

The Boston Pheonix was able to look up articles to get quotes about the 1997 crackdown yet it LIES about William Spring's reckless jaywalking incident by saying he "was struck by a bike messenger while WALKING in the city."

He was actually RUNNING against a red light when he slammed into a bike messenger who was travelling through a green light. Shortly after this the city of Boston came out with a campaign (Walk this way) targeting Spring's type of behaviour without mentioning him.

See the Boston Crash Controversey for more.

The Pheonix also says that"until fairly recently, [alley cats] were also strictly a New York thing." This is completly false . Both Boston and New York have long histrories with alley cats. The first alley cat race took place in Toronto in the summer of 1985.

Puma sponsors Olympic teams and star athletes around the world. But it is unlikely that even these finely conditioned athletes could keep pace with Puma's workers in China, forced to work up to 16.5 hours a day, from 7:30 a.m. to midnight, six or seven days a week, for wages of just 31 cents an hour.

The AP story about the Internet ruining the messenger industry was in at least 75 publications in May 2005. It was even on the front page of Yahoo as one of the top stories. The article is basically the same with different headlines like "Bike messengers fading fast", "Bike messengers ride into sunset", "Message is bad for bike couriers", and "Bye-bye to bicycles"

The problem is, the numbers don't back it up. The messenger industry felt the effects of the Internet in the late 1990's and early 2000's and it's growing again.

This article from 1996 shows the true cost of a bike messenger delivery, at that time. Since then cost have risen yet courier companies charge LESS for deliveries.

How can they do that? They force much of the cost of a delivery onto their employees by disguising them as independent contractors in violation of labor laws.

Vicious Twist Takes a Wild Ride - by Viscious Twist, April 2005