Bicycle Austin forum

MichaelBluejay

Webmaster

From: Austin, TX

Registered: 2008-05-26

Posts: 1,466

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Allstate insurance commercial slams Austin pedicabs

I heard a radio commercial about a week ago that went to town on Austin pedicabbers.  As it got more and more inflammatory, I was trying to figure out what the hell they were advertising.  Finally, at the end, they revealed that it was for Allstate Insurance and aimed at car owners, telling them that their car will be covered even it's damaged by an asshole pedicabber.

Here's the best my memory can conjure up after about a week for the text of the ad:  "Hi, I'm an Austin pedicabber.  The rules don't apply to me.  I don't care about the safety of my passengers.  Hey, let's ride on the sidewalk!  And weave in and out of traffic.  Stop signs?  They're optional. [etc.]"

I was surprised that nobody seems to be talking about this commercial anywhere on the net.  But when looking for it, I did find an article from a year and a half ago saying that by that time, passengers filed seven lawsuits against pedicab companies for injuries ranging "from broken bones to concussions to major surgery."

As a footnote, I was set to be the first pedicabber in Austin in 1996 (I'd had a custom cab constructed), but the City didn't have a way to license pedicabs at the time and fighting them was a bureaucratic nightmare.  IF they allowed it, they were going to regulate me under a combination of the taxicab ordinance and the horse-drawn carriage ordinance.  They were going to require that I carry a fire extinguisher on the cab, for no other reason that taxis were required to.  (When I protested that the fire risk on a pedicab is minimal, they shot back, "But what about the lights?  Don't they run on electricity?")  They were also going to require that I run a fixed-route service (not point to point), because that's what the horse-drawn carriages had to do.  The doozy was that they wanted me and the passengers to all wear helmets (remember that this was when we had the short-lived adult helmet law), and then suggested that i'd have to have new helmets for each passenger for hygiene concerns.

I kind of let my fight with them languish as I got busy with other things like my band and serving on the board of the housing co-ops, so I didn't follow through.  Then a year or two later they rewrote the ground transportation ordinance and included an explicit way to license and regulate pedicabs (possibly because of having dealt with me), and that opened the doors to everyone.  To be sure, Austin would eventually have pedicabs one way or the other because of the culture and demand, I hope it's just possible that it happened a little bit sooner because of my early efforts.  Either way, I'm just bummed that I missed my opportunity to stake my claim in history.  Now I'm never gonna qualify for a Wikipedia article.

owlman

Member

Registered: 2011-12-16

Posts: 142

Re: Allstate insurance commercial slams Austin pedicabs

Somebody mentioned it on twitter:  http://twitter.com/holtboggs/status/595931729770188802

(I haven't heard it, myself)