Campaign calls for appropriate workplace vehicle safety kit

SteerSafe is campaign for the workplace transport industry, covering all dangerous blind-spot manoeuvres, not just reversing. It is represented by key members of the transport industry, including veteran safety campaigner Chris Hanson-Abbott OBE, who was behind the 80s National Reverse in Safety Campaign.

According to the campaign, official figures reveal that one of the top three hazards at work is failing to manage workplace transport safety correctly.

SteerSafe is much wider in scope than the earlier National Reverse-in-Safety Campaign, and is calling for all commercial vehicles to be equipped with safety equipment appropriate to their use both on or off the road.

Mr Hanson-Abbott comments: “Four decades after I first started campaigning accidents still happen. I am shocked at the hazards posed by a moving commercial vehicle. Slow speed manoeuvring is the prime cause. A comprehensive range of safety systems is available off the shelf yet only a rear-view mirror is required by law.”

He adds: “There will always be cowboy operators who refuse to pay for safety unless a system is required specifically by law. But the law is long out of date. Hence operators serious about safety feel obliged to fit extra safety equipment to cover those hazard areas not addressed by the regulations while the cowboys get a cost advantage at the expense of the conscientious.

“Government shirks its responsibility to regulate where slow-speed manoeuvring is concerned. It is absurd to assume, for example, that a trained banksman will always be available when a reversing manoeuvre is necessary. A vehicle should be fully equipped for a lone driver to perform any manoeuvre safely. This is easy today.   Anything less is unacceptable,” he says.

Ultimately, Mr Hanson-Abbott is calling for the HSE to be given increased powers and responsibility to define hazard areas and demand that operators make safety interventions as specified by their HSE inspector as a condition of their operating licence.

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