Urgent action is needed to reduce fatal and serious crashes at work.

Urgent action is needed to tackle the stagnation in the number of people killed or injured in collisions involving drivers working or travelling on business, according to IAM RoadSmart.

The road safety charity’s concerns about a worrying lack of progress in driving down the number of work-related traffic incidents are highlighted in its latest white paper, ‘The Role of Business Drivers.’

In the paper IAM RoadSmart calls on all groups – the Health and Safety Executive, drivers and their employers, government and police – to do more to address the fact that there has been virtually no change in the number of fatal and serious injury road crashes on UK roads in the last decade.

The paper highlights some alarming practices and attitudes when it comes to employers and their drivers:

• Nearly half of business leaders polled (49%) expect their employees to answer their phone at any time, including while driving for work
• Just over one in eight employees who drive for work (13%) and more than one in 20 leaders (6%) consider the hard shoulder a safe place to take a work call
• One in six UK employees who drive for work (17%) say they have been involved in an incident when driving for work due to a phone call from a colleague

Neil Greig, IAM RoadSmart director of policy and research, says in the report, “Employers need to do more to drive change across their workforce and to take their responsibilities to keep staff safe, particularly when they’re behind the wheel for business.”

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