Research has highlighted a need and appetite among business car industry professionals for a nationwide road safety standard. Paul Barker reports.
Momentum is building for a universal work-related road safety standard after a report found management of work-driving risk is “lagging behind” other areas of health and safety, and that a national enforceable standard is needed to ensure firms understand and meet their responsibilities.
The Transport Research Laboratory has produced the report, entitled A Gap Analysis of Work-Related Road Safety in the UK: Working Towards a National Standard, examining two questions. Firstly, it looked at what a national standard for the management of road-related road risk should look like, and secondly, as the report was sponsored by the Metropolitan Police Service, what role or roles the police might play is supporting and/or contributing to a standard.
Unsurprisingly to those working in the industry, the report’s first key finding was that “the management of work-related road risk is widely perceived to be lagging behind the management of health and safety risk in the workplace”.
The report authors interviewed both industry stakeholders representing organisations taking an overview or advisory role in the field of work-related road safety, and fleet managers at companies largely drawn from the list of safety organisation Roadsafe’s Driving for Better Business champions, in an attempt to research those firms with existing best practice in place. The authors found there was an appetite for “the consistency of approach a national standard could bring”, so looked into how such a standard could operate. Crucial is emphasis of the business case involved in setting up a serious work-related road-safety programme, as it helps the much-needed buy-in from senior executives. Other components include vehicle maintenance, driver licence checks and data collection to monitor performance (also see ‘Report recommendations’).
“The awareness of work-related road risk has improved in recent years, largely thanks to the efforts of organisations including Brake and Driving for Better Business,” says BVRLA chief executive John Lewis. “A national standard would help focus attention on a single, well-understood framework that would be easier for fleet managers to implement.”
As the report identified small and medium-sized fleets as the ones least likely to have effective road-safety programmes, it stated the focus should be on “simple solutions that require little outside help to administer”. TRL has pinpointed the Driving for Better Business programme as being in the ideal position to “galvanise action to move a standard forward, if its resources and funding status permit”, given its “previous experience in outreach activities of this type”.
“We’d contributed to the report quite extensively and I think the position in many ways is unchanged than what it was eight to 10 years ago,” says Adrian Walsh, director of Roadsafe, a partnership of transport companies, the Government and road safety professionals. “We have no requirement in place to manage people that drive – there are no standards in place below 7.5t, and a very strict regime above that.
“In the past 10 years the regime for professional truck drivers has tightened and it’s improved efficiency – businesses are saying ‘the regulations have become burdensome, but it’s making us a more professional organisation’,” continues Walsh. “It’s not happened below 7.5t, but those businesses that have a tighter standard – standards of management not standards of driving – are better managing the way people work.”
One of the report’s authors, Shaun Helman, says that although the report was produced for the Metropolitan Police Service to consider, it could move the debate on. “You never really know with these reports, it depends who picks up on it,” he tells BusinessCar.
An interesting suggestion from the report regarding the police’s role in implementing any national standard is that they should be feeding details of offences committed by at-work drivers back to employers, with the TRL recommending the police explore ways of making this happen. Although it admitted that there would be technical and data issues to overcome, the report says police are in “an ideal position to engage with the relevant parties involved”. This is a move the BVRLA endorsed, but also called for road traffic accidents to be included in the Reporting of Injuries, Disease and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR), something they are currently specifically excluded from, unlike all other at-work incidents. “The Government is currently consulting on the future of the RIDDOR and we will be calling for road accidents to be brought into scope,” says Lewis.
The key for introducing standards, says Walsh, is enforcement, which can come internally, if a firm understands the benefits, rather than externally. “Improved safety is a result of good business management – it’s not being done because people are being killed and injured on the roads, it’s because people want to improve efficiency.”
