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Commercial Angles' Newsletter - January 2002

Work-related Road Safety Task Group

About one in three road deaths, or about one thousand deaths per year, involve someone who is driving as part of their work. This makes driving the largest cause of industrial deaths. Because of this, in May 2000 the Government set up the Work-related Road Safety Task Group (WRRSTG) in an effort to reduce the number of people killed or seriously injured on the road by 40%. The WRRSTG has now presented its report to the Government and the Health and Safety Commission. The report makes eighteen recommendations of which eleven are primary recommendations.

Primary recommendations

More rigorous application of health and safety at work law to on-the-road work activities.
Using risk assessment techniques, employers should bring at-work road safety within their existing health and safety management systems. Employees should also take reasonable care of their own health and safety.
Using risk assessment techniques, employers should ensure that employees are competent to drive safely. However an occupational driving test is not recommended.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) should lead a public information campaign to alert employers to their responsibilities.
HSE should develop generic guidance as to how employers can manage at-work road safety as soon as possible. The impact of this guidance should be assessed in 2004 to determine whether to issue an HSC Approved Code of Practice.
The police accident report form should be amended in 2002 to include questions about the purposes of the journeys which resulted in accidents.
HSE and HSC should consider how at-work road traffic accidents involving fatalities and greater than three days absence from work should be reported to the enforcing authorities.
Health and safety enforcing authorities, led by HSE, should develop working procedures to investigate at-work traffic accidents and enforce appropriate action.
The Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions (DTLR) and HSE should develop a research programme into the causes and ways of avoiding at-work road accidents.
A standing body should be delegated the task of taking forward recommendations and making progress reports to Government ministers.
The Government and HSC should consider what resources are appropriate to implement the recommendations.

Secondary recommendations

After issuing general guidance, HSE and other bodies should provide sector-specific guidance as appropriate.
HSE should influence management training providers to include work-related road safety risk management in their health and safety training courses.
HSE and HSC in implementing the Revitalising Health and Safety Initiative should include at-work road safety.
DTLR and HSE in providing health and safety leadership should include at-work road safety in their deliberations.
Examine whether HSE should have power to object to the granting of Operator Licences.
DTLR and other agencies should investigate methods of improving the safety of light goods vehicles.
Police authorities should use their powers to prosecute employers who fail to meet their responsibilities under road traffic law.

The message delivered by the report is clear: health and safety law and road traffic law should be applied rigorously against employers. However the focus of the report is on improving road safety - although it stops short of recommending additional training for fleet drivers. Also the WRRSTG report urges HSE to extend the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995 (RIDDOR) to vehicle-related incidents.

The WRRSTG report concludes that there will be economic gains to be made by taking vigorous action to reduce at-work road traffic accidents.

Articles from previous newsletters