Crashes: ignorance is no excuse

Ignorance is no excuse for company bosses and fleet operators to evade their occupational road risk responsibilities. However, South Yorkshire chief constable and RoadSafe board member Meredydd Hughes, suspects that some company directors, transport and fl eet managers have an in-built 'don't care attitude' or hold a belief that a road crash will not involve one of their employees.

Despite the raft of occupational road risk legislation facing 'rogue' companies, Mr Hughes, one of Britain's most high'profile policemen, says threatening organisations with court action is not the way to win the occupational road safety debate and reduce casualties.

Instead, said Mr Hughes, the key to reducing road crashes and the number of incidents involving at-work drivers is to encourage attitudinal and behavioural change throughout business.

But that does not mean that crash investigating police officers will not use the law to bring companies and their senior managers to book.

Mr Hughes, who as head of the Uniformed Operations Business Area for the Association of Chief Police Officers is responsible for overseeing roads policing, said: "There has been enough information in the media and sent out to companies so nobody can pretend to be ignorant of their responsibilities.

Consider

"Some managers just do not consider the risks being run by their drivers and if one of their vehicles is involved in a fatal crash they believe there will be no repercussions."

But, in a hard-hitting warning to company directors and managers who adopt that attitude, Mr Hughes, who has a 28-year police career behind him, said: “Police officers investigating a serious crash have the time and the mandate to look beyond the driver at the scene and follow up on issues such as poorly serviced or maintained vehicles.

"They will also look at the risks the driver involved in the crash was taking such as a lorry driver picking up an extra load or a company car driver trying to achieve an impossible schedule. Companies need to understand that there will be further action - and possibly through the courts.

"Against that background a company director, a fleet manager or a sales manager cannot say they have no responsibility for the use of a vehicle on the road, irrespective of who owns the vehicle. Responsibility and accountability stretches up through an organisation to the boss. There is no running away from it."

But, even with at least 30 Acts, protocols and regulations impacting on at-work driving and the possibility of the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill reaching the statute book later this year, Mr Hughes said: "It is not about threatening people. It is about reminding them that they cannot evade their occupational road risk responsibilities through ignorance or through a lack of detection.

"The possible introduction of new corporate manslaughter legislation does not change the behaviour of the police. We will investigate a crash from the point of collision backwards. If the circumstances then dictate a charge of corporate manslaughter then so be it. But we don't investigate offences from the outset with the view of charging someone with a specific offence."

Numerous

Responsibility is a word used by Mr Hughes in numerous answers to my questions, not least when I asked him about South Yorkshire Police being fined £500 late last year after a speed camera caught an unmarked police vehicle travelling at 47 mph in a 40 mph limit.

Extensive investigations failed to identify the driver so as the 'managing director' of the organisation, Mr Hughes, took the rap and the force was fined.

He said: "There is an absolute responsibility on companies for someone to take responsibility. In my force, because I am the leader, the buck stopped with me. In companies that might be the managing director or company secretary. You don't get points on your driving licence but you become the public face of unacceptable behaviour by your company or organisation."

Some at-work driving campaigners believe that the Health and Safety Executive has not taken a sufficiently high-profile role in improving occupational road safety, but Mr Hughes argues: "I am confident that the police service can appropriately investigate collisions, particularly fatalities, to the required standards then refer to the HSE if there are any specific additional issues. I am very comfortable with the investigation of collisions being a police-led operation."

He believes the HSE should, for example, focus on accident trends and systems within industry sectors and then integrate with scene-of-accident investigators on follow-up work.

"I want to see a clear understanding of where the HSE can have impact in commercial enterprises and business practice in the investigating of incidents," explained Mr Hughes.

Speeding

"If a salesman is speeding and then kills because of the work schedule we will follow that up and find out who is really driving the car - the chap behind the wheel or the chap in the office setting the schedule."

Careful attention to work schedules is crucial, with Mr Hughes pointing out that he has recently looked at shift patterns at his force as most police in-service deaths are the result of officers crashing while driving home tired at the end of a long shift.

While speed cameras may be the number one 'enemy' among some motorists, Mr Hughes' view is that they are an extension of 'automated law' that free police offi cers for other duties such as investigating and fighting crime on the roads, in business and in people's homes.

"It has always amazed me that people are so disregarding of speed limits when they obey other laws. We accept compromises in other parts of our lives for the greater good of society and yet many people carp at one that is most likely to save their life. Speed limits may not work perfectly but they are better than the anarchy that would otherwise exist," he said.

In an era of intelligenceled policing - Automated Number Plate Recognition cameras are the single biggest weapon in the police armoury in catching criminals - law-abiding motorists are unlikely to be stopped, he predicted.

Linked

"Through technology linked to databases, documentation can be checked immediately and if you have the required paperwork, drive your vehicle correctly within the law you will probably not be stopped," he said. "Technology provides real advantages for the lawabiding motorists going about their business.

"Roads policing is at the core of all our policing so it is important that I am not seen purely as a traffic policeman. Roads police contribute to all policing from counter terrorism to anti-social behaviour.

"That is why I have no time for people who say 'motorists are being picked on'."

And, he insists that people who think that there are no traffic police on the roads are in for a 'nasty surprise'. Within the next 12 months a Yorkshire and Humberside Roads Policing Group will be formed - similar regional traffic units will be formed across other parts of the country - to deliver consistency across force areas.

Continuing the technology theme and the increasing amount of sophisticated equipment being fitted to vehicles - telemetry units and speed limiters, for example, with perhaps so-called 'alcolocks' to follow - Mr Hughes says he is sceptical about how effective such systems are in dealing with the behaviour of the worst drivers.

"I am pleased to see technology. But my suspicion is that broadly responsible drivers will have the equipment fitted although they are likely to be the people who need it least. The worst drivers will put as much ingenuity into defeating the technology as the manufacturers put into designing it. I have never seen technology designed by one person that another will not find a way around," he said.

"That is another reason for changing attitudes and driving habits," he said.

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