Opinion: Companies should aim for life in the safe lane for employees

Earlier this year, the government's Work-Related Road Safety Task Group initiated a national debate around the proposition that employers should be managing risks faced (and created) by their employees on the road as part of health and safety at work.

The idea is that organisations should be taking action to promote the safety of their staff while at work on the road, whether as drivers, passengers or pedestrians. The group, chaired by Richard Dykes, a senior director at the Post Office, is convinced that occupational road risk is a major but still generally neglected issue. In part, this is because the Health and Safety at Work Act has not been enforced in this area.

It is clear that there is a very strong 'business case' for action in this area. Not only can the management of occupational road risk improve overall employee safety, but it can help reduce the resulting costs of accidents and create efficiency savings, improve an organisation's safety image (a company's drivers are its ambassadors on the road) and make a significant contribution to meeting UK road safety targets.

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (Rospa), which is represented on the task group, has been campaigning for the past six years for organisations to adopt a proactive risk management approach to reducing the risks connected with 'at work' vehicle use.

Driving for work is clearly a risky business. For example, car and van drivers who cover 25,000 miles a year as part of their job are at virtually the same risk of being killed at work as construction workers. And company car drivers have nearly twice the accident liability of drivers in general.

When developing its guidance (Managing Occupational Road Risk, March 1998) Rospa estimated that, out of a total of 3,400 road accident fatalities every year, between 800 and 1000 (25-30 per cent) were likely to involve vehicles being driven for work purposes.

At first this was doubted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) but consultants engaged subsequently by the government's task group to research the casualty background have confirmed Rospa's estimates as broadly correct.

Driving for work is clearly a risky business. For example, car and van drivers who cover 25,000 miles a year as part of their job are at virtually the same risk of being killed at work as construction workers

Further evidence comes from the HSE's survey of self-reported work related injury which has shown that there are some 77,000 injuries to employees every year as a result of 'at work' road accidents. Employers clearly have moral as well as legal duties to assess the 'at work' road risks and take 'reasonably practicable measures' to ensure 'safe systems of work' for their drivers. Many practical and cost effective control measures can be put in place. It may be possible to look at getting risks down 'at source', for example by exploring safe travel alternatives.

If staff do use the road there are measures the company can take to reduce the risk. These include:

• specifying safest routes
  
• setting standards for safe schedules, journey times and distance limits
  
• selecting vehicles with additional safety features
  
• ensuring safe maintenance
  
• ensuring drivers are fit and
  
• having suitable driver selection, assessment and driver development arrangements in place to help them to cope with the risks on the road.

What Rospa has been arguing however is that 'at work' road safety is not just a question of introducing specific control measures.

Continuous improvement
The primary focus must be on ensuring that organisations have a systematic risk management capability, adapting the 'systems approach' to health and safety management advocated by the HSE and the British Standards Institution in guidance documents such as HSG65 and BS8800.

Organisations should establish and communicate clear road safety policies and objectives, specify the responsibilities and competence required to achieve them at every level, put in place a planned approach to risk control informed by risk assessment and targets.

They should also develop arrangements to monitor road safety performance (actively and reactively) and have a system for feeding back lessons from periodic review. If they fail to do these things they will not be able to achieve a cycle of continuous improvement.