Road safety is a major burden on global wellbeing, with World Health Organisation data suggesting that approximately 1.2 million of the five million global injury deaths – those that occur as a result of injury – each year are road safety-related. As more and more evidence and statistics are collected to demonstrate that many of those deaths involve, or are caused by, drivers at work it is becoming clear that fleet and road risk management needs to be at the heart of the process to develop a positive safety culture.
Fleet or work-related road safety has grown in prominence in recent years as incidents have increased. These include people involved in crashes while working by the roadside or driving as part of their work, either in their own vehicle, or a vehicle provided by their employer. Research undertaken in Australia and the UK suggests that work-related road safety is most likely to be improved by the introduction of an integrated set of risk assessment-led measures based on the safety culture within the organisation.
To achieve this, researchers have developed the WIPE process:
• Why focus on fleet safety?
• Initial and continuing status review.
• Pilot, implement and change-manage counter-measures.
• Evaluation.
Why focus on fleet safety?
The reasons why companies and safety and health practitioners should pay attention to work-related road safety are many, and can be grouped under the headings ‘societal’, ‘business’, ‘legal’ and ‘cost’.
Societal factors
At present there is only limited data on the true extent of the work-driver effect on road safety because few jurisdictions around the world maintain any ‘purpose of journey’ information in relation to road crashes. (The best data currently available is for Queensland in Australia, where at least 16 per cent of crashes resulting in hospitalisation and 24 per cent of fatal crashes between 1998 and 2002 involved someone driving for work.) Based on the information that is known about work-related road safety in the UK, the main societal arguments for improving it can be summarised as follows:
1 There have been more than 20 million people killed on world roads since 1885, including 3 million in the USA,which is twice as many as have beenkilled in all the wars it has been involved in.
2 European Commission data suggests there are 1.3 million road accidents in Europe each year, including more than 40,000 fatalities and 1.7 million injuries. These are estimated to cost more than ¤ 160 billion, or 2 per cent of gross national product.
3 In the UK, road death is the most likely way for 4 to 44-year-olds to die. Recent police trials in England and Scotland indicated that about 30 per cent of the 9-10 road fatalities a day in the UK are work-related. This means that there are about four times more work-related road fatalities than non vehicle-based work-related fatalities in the UK. Company-owned vehicles account for just 14 per cent of the UK’s 28 million vehicles. This excludes people driving their own vehicle for work, but is still massively disproportionate.
4 Purpose of journey data is limited, but business travel accounts for about 30 per cent of all UK travel, rising to more than 50 per cent if commuting is included. Fleets purchase between 50 and 70 per cent of new vehicles, which are normally sold on within three years, meaning the safety features they specify filter into standard production and to the general public relatively quickly.
5 Large goods vehicles (LGVs) make up approximately 1 per cent of vehicles registered, or 6 per cent of kilometres travelled, and are involved in more than 15 per cent of road fatalities in the UK. It is not known how many of these are actually caused by LGVs. Small goods vehicles (such as vans) are involved in about 300 fatalities a year, but remain outside strict regulations on
drivers’ hours, tachographs and licences.
6 Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) surveys suggest that company car drivers have about 50 per cent more accidents than ordinary drivers, even after allowing for their higher mileages. Other TRL surveys show that drivers doing more than 80 per cent of their mileage on work business (23 per cent of all those who drive for work) had 53 per cent more injury accidents than those not driving for work.
7 Data from RoSPA suggests that driving 25,000 miles a year for work produces a greater annual risk of death than coal mining or construction.
8 Labour Force Survey data suggests there are approximately 77,000 road-related injuries a year to employees and the self-employed in the UK.
9 Insurance data shows that between 20 and 65 per cent of company cars are involved in an accident every year. During 2000, this equated to more than one million fleet vehicle insurance claims in the UK, costing almost £2 billion in claims. Each commercial vehicle averages approximately one crash a year in the UK.
10 Many crashes get ‘lost’ somewhere between the Police, insurers, the vehicle operator’s own statistics, the Department for Transport (DfT), the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the hospitals, and local authorities. As a result they go unrecorded, so the true extent of the problem can only be guessed at.
Business factors
From a more general organisational or business perspective there is a clear link between safety, quality, customer service, efficiency and the environment through getting things right first time, better fuel efficiency, and reduced asset wear and tear. Work-related road safety is a core activity, which cannot be isolated from the business overall, and offers many marketing, business development, corporate social responsibility, staff wellbeing and brand enhancement or protection opportunities. At the most simple level, it is much better to be promoting a good news safety story, such as winning a safety award, than it is to have to suppress the outcomes of a major incident.
A proactive safety program can also keep an organisation ahead of, and protected from regulations and legal requirements. Proactive organisations can also help shape and lead forthcoming regulations, which gives them a competitive advantage by being ahead of more reactive organisations. Many such companies have also used safety as part of their business development process and to help them diversify by promoting their safety systems to others.
Legal factors
Legally, many jurisdictions around the world – including the UK, Australia and New Zealand in the last year or so – have tightened up their occupational health and safety regulations to include work-related driving. In the UK, the joint HSE/DfT guidance on work-related road safety issued last year suggests that this can be achieved by competent people in organisations taking a risk assessment-led approach to managing drivers, vehicles and the journeys they undertake. In many cases this is the safety and health practitioner, but a better approach in larger organisations is a multi-functional group, including the transport or fleet manager, personnel manager, operational managers and a finance or insurance person – ideally with a budget.
Although the joint HSE/DfT document is only guidance it should be seen as a minimum benchmark standard for organisations to work to. This means that not only do organisations have to ensure that their workers drive within the road traffic rules, but also the organisations themselves must have clearly risk-assessed and documented safe systems of work in place for their vehicles, drivers, journeys, sites and processes.
The guidance covers all forms of work-related transport, including cars, trucks, bicycles, buses, vans, construction plant and towing units, and clarifies that the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations on risk assessment do apply to work-related driving – even where people are using their own vehicle. Commuting to a normal place of work is excluded.
The guidance has also seen moves towards a closer relationship between the Police and the HSE in road accident investigations, where questions the Police are asking include: “Was there a work element involved?” and “Did the organisation have appropriate management policies, procedures and audit trails in place?” Important legislation and guidance that organisations should make sure they are compliant with are:
• State-based traffic and transport Acts;
• State-based Occupational Health and Safety Acts;
• The ban on mobile phone use while driving, which now exist in each state
At the very least, organisations should be developing fleet safety programs as a way of being seen to be doing the right things to protect themselves in relation to the legislation.
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