Shortly after Assad, a full-time delivery driver in Washington, DC, began working in the delivery business, he was hit by a car while on the job. His e-bike, which he had purchased for the job, was still operational. When he called the delivery company to inform them of the accident, they urged him to still deliver the food that he was carrying. So he did.

The delivery company’s response to Assad’s workplace accident is not uncommon. The Instant Delivery Workplace in D. C., a new Georgetown University study of delivery workers in the nation’s capital that draws on interviews with Assad and forty other such workers, finds that 23 percent of them report on-the-job workplace collisions. Several of the workers in the study say that they do not report car crashes to their employers out of fear that it will jeopardize their work.

“Indeed, one worker in this study ended up with a DoorDash violation for an incomplete delivery when she was hit by a car,” write Katie J. Wells and Isabella Stratta, the report’s authors. “She needed an ambulance and, in the fog of her concussion, believes she forgot to inform the company what had happened to the food she was supposed to deliver.”