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Management of Occupational Road Risk

The facts

An estimated third of road traffic accidents in Britain involve someone at work, meaning on average in 2009, 14 people were killed each week and almost 160 seriously injured this way. The human and financial costs to families, businesses and the wider community are enormous.
The Labour Force Survey estimates there are 70-100K non-fatal work-related road traffic accident (RTA) injuries each year, with around 30-40K of these causing more than 3 days absence. Currently, work-related RTAs are not reportable under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR).
Police personal injury road casualty data are used for a GB-wide database (STATS19), but this is considered unreliable for estimating work-related fatal RTAs and collection was revised in 2011. New data should be available for analysis in 2012.
Many people drive as part of their work, either full or part time – though there is no official estimate of the numbers.
Employers have clear duties under the Health and Safety at Work (etc) Act 1974 and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 to manage work-related health and safety risks, which will include their occupational road risks.
The consequences of accidents to the self-employed and small businesses are likely to be proportionately greater than for larger businesses with more resource.
The benefits of managing work-related road safety can be considerable, no matter what the size of your enterprise.
IOSH commissioned the Transport Research Laboratory to conduct a review and stakeholder report into the efficacy of existing work-related road safety interventions.

Our position

As work-related RTAs are a significant cause of preventable death and injury we think that people should be protected from the hazards.
Employers should ensure they produce and effectively communicate a policy for the management of work-related road safety with their staff.
Road safety policies should cover suitable and properly maintained vehicles; driver suitability, fitness and training; and realistic timescales for journeys, to prevent stress or pressure to take risks.
Journeys should be properly planned to avoid undue fatigue and plans reassessed if weather conditions deteriorate.
Employers need to control the risks from ‘driver distraction’ and include this in their policy e.g. prohibit activities like phone-use and eating while driving.
Managers should consider alternatives to driving, for example train travel or video- and tele-conferencing.
In addition to RTAs, employees should also be encouraged to inform employers of any serious near-misses on the road, so that lessons can be shared.
IOSH has repeatedly called for work-related RTAs to be included as a reporting requirement under RIDDOR since 2001. We have also called for an improvement to STATS19, welcoming the revision to this introduced in January 2011.