BIKE THEFT MITIGATION FOR NYC DELIVERY WORKERS

The Capstone team identified a problem within the NYC delivery worker community: current motion sensor on-bike alarms fail to notify workers of security breaches to bikes locked on the street while workers are making in-building deliveries (which typically last one to ten minutes). It is estimated that fifty percent of delivery workers in NYC fall victim to e-bike theft, yet delivery work is subject to minimal regulation and workers have almost no workplace protections. The Capstone team created a solution called Tandem, with the goal of providing delivery workers protection from theft. Tandem’s 4G LTE-enabled motion-sensor alarm helps NYC food delivery workers avoid the cost of e-bike replacement by: 1) providing motion-sensor phone alerts so that workers have a sufficient window of time to return to their bikes during theft attempts, and 2) streamlining communications within the delivery worker community through GPS sharing of bike locations to social networks in case of attempted thefts.