Road risk management
Foreword
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The vast majority of company bosses understand balance sheets and profit and loss accounts...
Ashley Martin
When businesses dip into the red, alarm bells start to ring and measures are usually implemented to turnaround the company.
It is about time that all company directors begin to view occupational road risk management with the same financial focus.
Thousands of companies – some large organisations and many SMEs – have absolutely no idea that road crashes are wiping profits off their bottom line, according to Christopher Bullock, the boss of the IAM Group.
Turn that statement on its head and imagine how many more sales have to be made to cover losses recorded through crashes? It would invariably be a sum large enough to make most financial directors question the exactness of their own calculations.
Yet, despite the financial evidence, the continuing focus by law enforcers on bringing to justice companies that fail to abide by ever-tightening work-related road safety legislation and, perhaps most importantly of all, the number of companies highlighted in this issue of RoadSafe that are championing interventions to their benefit, significant steps need to be taken by numerous organisations.
And, it is not only companyoperated car, vans and trucks that are the focus of concern. A new report by business car specialists Arval highlights the appalling lack of management surrounding the use of employeeowned vehicles on work trips.
Coincidently a serving police officer and the influential Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety have both called for a national road death investigation unit to be established. They believe that coordination of crash investigations across the UK with resulting recommendations implemented from John O’Groats to Land’s End would lead to a significant reduction in incidents. Such a move would replicate national air, sea and rail investigation branches.
But, why wait for that? Numerous organisations are striving to encourage companies to focus on their atwork driving safety - from vehicle manufacturers to the Department for Transport; fire and rescue services to the Highways Agency; and the European Union to specialist occupational road risk management providers.
Above all, the DfT’s ‘Driving for Better Business’ programme and the ‘business champions’ emanating from the initiative, can prove time and time again that a corporate safety focus saves cash, as well as lives.
As Peter Locke, company secretary of Chelmsford Electrical, a ‘business champion’ company, says in the magazine: “I cannot see why any business would not make the investment that we have done.”