Health and safety professionals can be much more proactive in improving the road-safety performance of their organisations, claims Dr Will Murray, who discusses some of the research he has been involved in and the experience he has had with various organisations.
Road safety is a major burden on global well-being. World Health Organisation data1,2 suggest that approximately 1.2 of the 5 million global injury deaths each year are due to road crashes. To address this, governments all over the world have implemented various engineering, educational, enforcement, and evaluation-based programmes — some of which have been more effective than others.
In the UK and around the world, using the road for business is the single largest cause of work-related fatalities.1 Unfortunately, there are still many organisations that do not actively focus on road safety, mainly owing to a lack of understanding and ownership, or even confusion between who manages the risk. In some organisations, the lack of action is because health, safety and environment managers believe that fleet managers are responsible for road safety, and vice versa, leading to no action being taken at all. In other cases, the fact that road safety is not included in much of the formal study undertaken by SHE specialists has led to a lack of awareness of the subject and the measures that can be implemented to help control, or reduce risk. There are, of course, some notable exceptions to this.3,4
There are several societal, business, legal, and cost reasons why organisations should manage road safety. The importance of each depends on to whom the business case is being made. Typically, senior managers involved in marketing and branding are influenced by the corporate social responsibility and business benefits; compliance and legal managers take notice of the legal requirements; and accountants/business managers are most likely to be persuaded by strong financial arguments. As a safety and health practitioner, you should pitch your message accordingly.
Societal factors
Road safety has a massive impact on society, and for this reason can play a major role in improving — or damaging — an organisation’s corporate social responsibility rating.
European Commission data1 suggests there are 1.3 million road-vehicle collisions in Europe each year, including more than 40,000 fatalities and 1.7 million injuries. These are estimated to cost more than €160 billion, or 2 per cent of gross national product in a typical European country.
In the UK, road crashes are the most likely way for four to 44-year-olds to die.1,2 During 2007, almost 3000 people were killed on the roads in the UK — an average of nine a day. Department for Transport Purpose of Journey data, and industry estimates, suggest that between 25 and 30 per cent of these incidents involved at least one person driving for work.2 This means there are about four times more work-related road fatalities than non vehicle-based occupational fatalities in the UK. Such a toll obviously has a significant impact on workers, their families, and their employers.
Many UK organisations operate large and distinctive fleets, so it is important that both employees and customers see that they are taking a proactive approach to managing foreseeable risks — for example, by publicising road safety initiatives and delivering on promises to ensure a positive impact on society.
Protecting people, profit and the planet has grown increasingly important, with most organisations now having a CSR strategy, or statement of intent. In recent years, more proactive organisations have begun to see the link between CSR and road safety. Good fleet safety helps protect people from injury, saves money, and is good for the environment.
Business factors
When managed in a proactive way, there are clear links between safety, quality, customer service, efficiency, and the environment. This can be reflected in many ways, including: improved fuel efficiency, reduced asset damage, reduced vehicle downtime, and wear and tear. For most organisations, work-related road safety is a core activity that cannot be isolated from the business overall, and which offers many marketing, business-development, staff well-being, brand-enhancement, and brand-protection opportunities. At the simplest level, it is much better for an organisation to be promoting a good-news safety story, such as winning an award, than it is to have to react to and suppress the outcomes of a major incident.
A proactive road risk programme can also keep organisations ahead of and compliant with regulations and legal requirements. Indeed, proactive organisations can help shape and lead future safety regulations, and gain a competitive advantage by being ahead of more reactive organisations.
Legal factors
Legally, many jurisdictions around the world — including the UK — have tightened up their occupational safety and health regulations to include work-related driving. In the UK, the joint Health and Safety Executive/Department for Transport guidance on work-related road safety, issued in September 2003,5 set out how this should be achieved by competent people in organisations taking a risk assessment-led approach to managing drivers, vehicles, and the journeys they undertake.
Although the HSE/DfT document is only guidance, it has become a minimum benchmark standard for organisations to work to. This means that not only do organisations have to ensure that their workers drive within the road-traffic rules but also that the organisations themselves have clear, risk-assessed and documented safe systems of work in place for their vehicles, drivers, journeys, sites and processes. The guidance covers all forms of work-related transport, including cars, trucks, bicycles, buses, vans, construction plant and towing units, and clarifies that the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations on risk assessment do apply to work-related driving — even where people are using their own vehicle.
There is also now a closer relationship between the Police, HSE and DfT in road-vehicle collision investigations, in that Police enquiries now include questions like ‘was there a work element involved?’ and ‘did the organisation have appropriate management policies, procedures and audit trails in place?’
Legally, as a minimum, organisations should be complying with the guidance, in which case they will be able to answer yes when asked if they are familiar and compliant with all of the following:
All of the above needs to be covered by an organisation’s fleet-safety policy, ideally incorporated in its health and safety policy, which details how to effectively manage work-related road safety legally, while minimising the risks to the brand, employees, and other road users in a cost-effective way. (The policy should be reviewed and reissued on an annual basis to ensure compliance with current legislation, and that it is being applied.)
Of particular importance are the Road Safety Act 2006 and the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007. Among other things, the former introduced a new offence of causing death by careless or illegal driving,6 and focuses on speed penalties and mobile phones. The new offence brings the need for driver-licence, insurance and MOT checks to the top of the agenda for any organisation that requires its staff to drive on business.
The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act focuses attention on the way in which a company’s activities — including work-related driving — are organised by senior management. The new legislation simply requires that a significant element of the procedure or system failure that caused the incident must be at a management level, meaning senior managers and directors will be more accountable after any fatal work-related collision.
Cost factors
In the current economic climate of rationalisation, downsizing, and the limited availability of capital, maintaining safety in a cost-effective way — or loss prevention — is particularly important. The financial implications of failing to manage work-related road safety can be massive, with significant increases in insurance, ‘ambulance-chasing’, and personal-injury costs. Industry research7 shows that, typically, workplace injury costs are met 40 per cent by the employee, 30 per cent by the employer, and 30 per cent by the community as a whole.
The table above shows a cost model that many organisations have used to show the financial implications of fleet safety. It is based on one typical collision, in which Company A’s vehicle runs into the rear of a third party, and has to pay £1000 to repair the damage to its own vehicle.
Including own damage costs, third-party vehicle damage costs, and third-party injury costs, the table shows the full financial implications of this one incident. HSE data suggests that the reported collision-cost figure of £3000 should be multiplied by between 8 and 36 times to identify the hidden costs of the collision. However, industry experience suggests that such hidden costs should be treated more conservatively, so a multiplication factor of 2 has been used in this instance.
To cover this £3000 collision cost, £60,000 of revenue would be required, equating to sales of 120,000 units of Company A’s product. So, in building a business case, it is worth asking the question: ‘Is it easier to sell 120,000 extra products, or be more proactive in preventing collisions?’
Summary of the business case
As noted above, up-front investment in safety programmes is becoming much more difficult to justify in these recessionary times. As a result, risk financing is becoming increasingly important, i.e. finding clever ways to fund these programmes and minimise the cost of fleet safety. The model shown in the table above can be used by organisations as a basis for a data-led, ‘risk targeting’-based approach. It can also be used to project the long-term costs and potential returns on investment from adopting a proactive fleet safety policy.
Overall, there are strong legal, societal, business, and financial arguments in favour of SHE managers taking proactive steps to improve road safety. The immediately achievable benefits of improving road safety include increased awareness of ‘on-the-road’ risks, improved safety, fewer potential vehicle collisions, and, of course, fewer deaths and injuries. Financial benefits can be obtained via reductions in vehicle downtime and repair costs, and higher productivity as a result of less injury absence among employees.
Case studies describing how organisations have successfully used this business-case methodology can be found at www.virtualriskmanager.net and www.fleetsafetybenchmarking.net
References
1 Murray, W, Pratt, S, Hingston, J and Dubens, E (2009): Promoting Global Initiatives for Occupational Road Safety: Review of Occupational Road Safety Worldwide (Draft) www.cdc.gov/niosh/ programs/twu/global
2 Murray, W (2003): Company Vehicle Incident Reporting and Recording (CoVIR) — Department for Transport Road Safety Report 31 — www.dft.gov.uk/ pgr/roadsafety/research/rsrr/theme5/companyvehicleincidentreport4781?page=3
3 Murray, W, Ison, S, Gallemore, P & Nijjar, H (2009): ‘Effective occupational road safety programs: A case study of Wolseley’, Paper 09-1327 presented at the 88th Annual Transportation Research Board Meeting, 11-15 January, 2009
4 Wallington, D, Darby, P, Murray, W, Raeside, R & Ison, S (2009): Analysing and improving occupational road safety: Case study of British Telecom, Napier University Working Paper series (in press)
5 HSE/DfT (2003): Guidance on driving at work: Managing work-related road safety — www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg382.pdf
6 See SHP September 2008, News or search for the story on this website
7 Murray, W, Newnam, S, Watson, B, Davey, J and Schonfeld, C (2003): Evaluating and improving fleet safety in Australia, Canberra: ATSB — www.infrastructure.gov.au/roads/safety/publications/2003/eval_fleetsafe.aspx
Dr Will Murray will be speaking on this subject in the SHP Arena at 12.15pm on 14 May — for the full programme and details of all speakers, visit www.shponline.co.uk/pdfs/shparena09.pdf
Dr Murray would like to acknowledge the support of Paul Gallemore, head of HSEQ — UK & Europe at Wolseley in writing this article.
The Safety Conversation with SHP (previously the Safety and Health Podcast) aims to bring you the latest news, insights and legislation updates in the form of interviews, discussions and panel debates from leading figures within the profession.
Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts, subscribe and join the conversation today!
