Fatality figures may be understated
UP TO 1,000 fatalities may have been left out of official statistics for workplace deaths in Britain as measured by the Health and Safety Executive thereby undermining moves to increase occupational road risk management, it has been claimed...
The House of Commons Transport Committee has joined the call for the HSE to investigate work-related road deaths in the same manner at it inquiries into the deaths of employees in factories
Official HSE figures show that in 2007/8 a total of 229 people were killed at work, down from 247 in 2006/7. But those figures exclude road users killed in crashes where someone was driving for work.
Now the influential House of Commons Transport Committee has joined the call for the HSE to investigate work-related road deaths in the same manner at it inquiries into the deaths of employees in factories. Although, there are no official figures for the number of people killed in workrelated road crashes, the HSE’s own estimate was more than 1,000 when it published its ‘Driving at Work – Managing Work-Related Road Safety’ advice document, which is available at www.hse.gov. uk/pubns/indg382.pdf
Meanwhile, the Transport Committee says that in 2007, approximately 750-1,000 out of 2,946 road deaths were workrelated.
Scandal
The Committee in a recent report ‘Ending the Scandal of Complacency: Road Safety beyond 2010’, says: “It is anomalous that the vast majority of work-related deaths are not examined by the HSE, purely because they occur on the roads.”
The MPs report in to road safety, which it calls the “major public health problem of our age”, was published as the Department for Transport has started compiling a strategy to cut death and injuries on the roads from 2010 when the current policy expires (RoadSafe: summer 2008).
The Committee has also called on the Government to establish a road accident investigation branch, to parallel those for aviation, marine and rail. The purpose of the organisation, which was called for by Inspector Simon Labbett, of Sussex Police, in an article in RoadSafe (winter 2007), would be to draw together lessons from the fatal accident investigations undertaken by police and other sources.
Mark Sinclair, director of multimarque fleet funding company Alphabet, has echoed the call for the HSE to investigate workrelated road deaths. He said: “Can the HSE justify leaving more than a 1,000 work-related deaths, in its own estimation, out of the official record simply because they occur on the roads?”
He believes the discrepancy could result in an undermining of the importance of companies implementing occupational road risk management strategies when more people are killed and seriously injured on Britain’s roads while driving on behalf of their employer than in any other workrelated activity.
It’s a view shared by the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH), which has called for road crashes involving people driving for work to be reported under the Reporting of Incidents, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR). Those rules require that all work-related deaths, major injuries or injuries resulting in over three days off work, work-related diseases and dangerous occurrences such as near-miss accidents are reported. Mr Sinclair said: “A busy boss who only sees the headline figure of 229 deaths a year is almost certain to assume it includes working drivers killed in crashes. If they do, any conclusions they draw about the level of risk to their own company’s drivers will be dangerously optimistic.
“Because of this under reporting of workplace casualties over several years, many thousands of employers and drivers remain unaware of the real seriousness of occupational road risks. The HSE’s own official statistics are helping to undermine attempts by responsible organisations and businesses in the fleet industry to raise awareness of the need for careful management of road risks.”
Alphabet wants the HSE to be ‘completely open’ about the number of workplace deaths in future announcements and include workrelated road deaths.
“People will be shocked by the figures but the road safety benefits would be huge, especially for the tens of thousands of firms and millions of drivers who are being lulled into a false sense of security by the HSE’s very partial headline statistics,” said Mr Sinclair.
Statistics
IOSH president Ray Hurst said: “The health and safety statistics published as they are underestimates the true situation. Other countries do include road deaths among their health and safety statistics.
“It seems the roads are the one place where employers will continue to be able to get away with putting their workers lives, and those of others, at risk. Work-related road deaths are a gaping hole in our health and safety recording.”
An HSE spokeswoman said: “RIDDOR’s fundamental purpose is to provide rapid intelligence to enable investigation and reactive enforcement by HSE and local authorities. HSE does not generally seek to apply health and safety at work legislation where there is more specific and detailed law that adequately protects public and worker safety. In this case there is road traffic law which is enforced by the police and others, for example the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency and the Traffic Commissioners.
“Following a review in 2006 the Health and Safety Executive was informed that there was some demand for making work-related road accidents reportable, principally to signal the importance of this matter.
“Given both RIDDOR’s focus on enabling effective enforcement by HSE and local authorities, and the development of other initiatives to promote good practice in employer management of road risk, HSE agreed that the case for making road accidents RIDDOR reportable was not strong enough to warrant proposing that the regulations be changed.”