Introduction and Aim: The aim of this study is to describe the use of personal protection equipment (PPE) and vehicle protection equipment (VPE) and the compliance with traffic regulations of delivery gig workers according to working vehicle.

Materials and Methods: This is a structured covert direct observational study. The city of Barcelona is organized in 10 districts. We chose one random address in each district and searched for nearby restaurants using a delivery company’s website. We selected the 10 first restaurants returned by our search. Subsequently, we entered the addresses of the 10 restaurants in ‘Google Maps’, which automatically created a route between the 10 restaurants. When the routes did not have a logical sequence, we re-ordered them manually. This procedure was repeated for all 10 districts.  The observers walked each complete route twice, during the midday (13.00-16.00) and at evening (19.00-22.00). They waited approximately for 15 minutes in each corner or traffic light of the routes. During a total of 141 hours, from September to December of 2018, we observed 803 delivery gig workers in Barcelona. We calculated the prevalence and prevalence ratios of compliance with traffic regulations (e.g. driving lane), use of PPE (e.g. helmet) and VPE (e.g. bicycle refractors) for the covariates sex, approximate age, company (Deliveroo, Glovo, Stuart, UberEats and JustEat), working vehicle (classified as ‘bicycle’ (n=517) when they used bicycle, electric bicycle (n=17) or scooter (n=3), and ‘motorcycle’ (n=286), weather conditions and time of observation stratified by working vehicle.

Results: Most of workers were men (98%), aged 18 to 25 years (56.9%), used the bicycle as working vehicle (64.4%), and worked for the companies ‘Deliveroo’ (45.2%) and ‘Glovo’ (43.9%). The majority of motorcycle riders complied with traffic regulations, while only 41% of the bicycle riders respected the traffic signals and 46% drove in the correct lane (p<0.05). The use of helmet was much lower among bicycle (13%) than motorcycle riders (99%). 31% had bicycle refractors and 15% had bicycle front light (p<0.05). In general, young and ‘Deliveroo’ workers less frequently complied the traffic regulations and used PPE and VPE.

Discussion and Recommendations: Delivery gig-workers are at high risk of occupational injuries aggravated by the irregular use of personal protection equipment and frequent violations of traffic regulations. Exploring these issues in qualitative studies is likely provide guidance how to improve Occupational Safety and Health for gig-workers.

Keywords: Gig work; platform digital work; Occupational risks; Non-standard employment

Note: Manuscript just has presented in the Congress of the Spanish Society of Epidemiology in 2019 by first author.