2008 – the year of getting tough

A POLICE questionnaire, that investigates employers’ legal compliance with health and safety risk protection for working drivers, is being trialled in London targeting delivery van operators.

Ultimately, thousands of companies with working cars are set to be included, with no escape for bosses found failing in their health and safety occupational road risk commitments.

Developed by a Metropolitan Police specialist health and safety team, skilled in work-related road risk, the questionnaire is a unique safety audit of a business’s working drivers and their vehicles – and/or a prosecution ‘instrument’.

In enforcement mode, it is about to reveal its strength of influence. An official told RoadSafe: “After a year of softly-softly introductory demonstration, enforcement has to motivate employers into getting a grip on this vital issue.”

Get tough year

So, is 2008 Scotland Yard’s health and safety on-road get tough year for employers of working drivers? “You work it out,” I was told. With huge potential in London and nationwide the questionnaire’s objective is unprecedented, to:

• Significantly reduce work-related road accidents that account for 33% of all highway crashes; and similarly reduce to and from-work smashes that account for another 17%. Each week 20 people are killed and 200 seriously injured in work-driving crashes.
• Achieve that sea change “by ensuring that work-related road safety is embedded within company policies… Businesses must face up to their duty of care responsibilities…on the road for business purposes whether they are driving a company car or not,” says Metropolitan Police traffic unit Supt. Mark Bird.

Several police forces are now united in deep-probing company road safety policies after employee driver accidents, in a bid to reduce the 1,000 death crashes a year involving working vehicles.

Transport for London (TfL), financing the questionnaire project, intends it to generate a road accident-free culture among employers including employer inspired accident-free to and from work driving. “Employers have simply got to accept all their road safety responsibilities,” said a senior policeman.

Answering the questionnaire can be selfincriminating. For no road risk related failing is missed in the document’s interrogation. If widely used, as seems inevitable, the questionnaire is set to be feared by business executives, because it will alter attitudes.

Encapsulated into five pages of 21-questions are all the work-related road risk precautions an employer is obligated to have permanently in operation to meet the latest requirements. The questionnaire was derived from the joint Department of Transport and Health and Safety Executive document ‘Driving at work – Managing work related road safety’.

Called ‘Self/Joint Assessment Questionnaire’, the five-page encapsulation is a Metropolitan Police and Freight Operator Recommendation Scheme (FORS) document ‘assisting police in their management of work-related road safety’.

The HSE said: “This is a three-year HSE-Met Police-TfL project funded by TfL targeting commercial vehicle operators. It is too soon to discuss its future.”

Former Met Police Chief Insp. Ian Brooks, who was a senior police authority in work-related road risk and is now a private consultant in the subject, told RoadSafe: “The questionnaire is currently educationally led but health and safety enforcement is round the corner. It is likely that will result. In voluntarily operation the questionnaire is a policy audit. Its questions are read out by a police officer (to a company executive) to check a business’s work-related road risk compliance.”

The document has been designed for adoption by specialist police officers who are also qualified health and safety inspectors. The Metropolitan Police has about 10 such officers and since their health and safety qualification gives them HSE authority: could the questionnaire ‘grow’ into a HSE document or simply be widely used by health and safety inspectors working with local police? One envisaged future of the questionnaire is for its compulsory completion by a company whenever one of its employees is involved in a serious work-driving or to/from home/work road crash. Its many A-B-C-D tick reply options reveal if an employer is likely to be flouting health and safety occupational road risk precautions.

Prominent

City legal guru Michael Appleby, a prominent health and safety defence lawyer, and partner in Housemans Solicitors, said: “Relevant guidance for occupational road risk is in the DfT-HSE ‘Driving at work’ document, which highlights the three areas of importance for management of risk: driver – vehicle – journey. The Metropolitan Police questionnaire mirrors that guidance and demonstrates factors the prosecutor will consider when determining whether or not to prosecute.

“The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007, becoming law in April 2008, provides (in section 8) that HSE guidance can be taken into account by a jury when deciding if there has been a gross breach of health and safety duties by an employer.

“Companies should remember that police studying a road accident and having cause to question an employer are looking for accountability. Legally it is concerning that police understanding of health and safety varies considerably throughout the country so there is inconsistency in their actions.”

So, ‘be prepared’ is the message. Road risk management to safeguard against costly health and safety calamities is a necessity, and even becoming fashionable. Insurers, who make a science of minimising risk to maximise profit, are now focusing on giving young drivers cheaper cover for avoiding peak hour and night road use.

But providing working drivers with all legally necessary health and safety occupational road risk protection is time consuming administration riddled with pitfalls. Contracting professional specialists to do it for them – identify, organise, oversee, manage driver/ vehicle health and safety commitments – is the economic solution.

In reducing road risk an employer’s vehicle running costs reduce, so that specialised occupational road risk protection pays for itself, and more. Yet of the UK’s major specialists in the area it is claimed that only one, Fleet Support Group in Chippenham, provides a continuous performance measurement of each driver’s incidents, offences, and other analysed factors including driver-influenced costs.

Raise standards

Glen Davies, FORS manager for TfL, says of the police questionnaire: “Aimed at freight operators who deliver to or transit through London, the Scheme is designed to raise standards, promote sustainability, and recognise existing excellence within the freight industry.

“It has been set up by TfL’s Freight Unit in partnership with industry bodies and is a key project within the Sustainable Freight Distribution - a Plan for London. The scheme intends to put an industry benchmark in place. At present the only measure for operators is the baseline of legal compliance.

“FORS aims to give operators a measurable standard beyond the legal compliance, promoting sustainability and corporate social responsibility. The scheme is currently budgeted to run until 2010 but is anticipated to run past that period.”

What the questionnaire asks:

1. What checks do you make of your employees’ driving licences?
2. Do you check insurance policies for employees using their own vehicles at work or on company premises?
3. How do you ensure that your employees are competent to drive safely?
4. What are you management arrangements for preventing driver fatigue and are they sufficient?
5. What are your management arrangements for preventing use of mobile ’phones when driving?
6. What are your management arrangements for ensuring safe driving speeds?
7. What are your management arrangements for preventing substance misuse?
8. What are your management arrangements for ensuring seat belts are worn?
9. What are your man management arrangements for ensuring that drivers’ eyesight is correct?
10. Do you have management arrangements in place to protect the employees of your contractors?
11. Have your drivers been provided with training in the action to be taken in an emergency e.g. collision, breakdown, or if they feel unwell?
12. When buying new or replacement vehicles do you investigate which are best for driving and public safety?
13. What are your arrangements for maintaining vehicles in a safe condition?
14. Is safety-critical information readily available to drivers e.g. tyre pressures, headlight adjustment etc?
15. How do you plan routes so that the safest routes are chosen?
16. Are scheduled journey times realistic allowing sufficient time for breaks, congestion, and weather changes?
17. How do you ensure driving times are reasonable for drivers when tachograph requirements do not apply e.g. vans?
18. Does your overall health and safety policy specifically include work-related road safety?
19. Does your overall health and safety policy define management responsibilities in relation to work-related road safety?
20. What are your incident reporting and investigation procedures?
21. Does the company have IT databases for recording the drivers employed, vehicles and maintenance?

<< Back to contents page

• < previous article
• |
• next article >