Fleet Safety Drive
13 Oct 2003
For the first time, Britain’s 720,000 fleet operators are being told how to reduce accidents and avoid the risk of prosecution.
The Health & Safety Executive (HSE) has issued a 60-point Health & Safety checklist to encourage fleet operators to adopt best practice risk management techniques.
In a 24-page guide, “Driving work and managing work related road safety”, the HSE checklist outlines company’s legal responsibilities, the benefits of managing work related road safety and how work related road safety should be managed.
Government, the Police and the HSE have been prosecuting companies with charges of manslaughter and aiding and abetting driving offences in an attempt to raise the profile of work related road safety and reduced the number of accidents.
So it is perhaps surprising that the HSE has chosen to educate employers by producing a guide, rather than publishing a full approved code of practice (ACOP), a breach of which would invariably result in a Health & Safety prosecution. But what does the guide contain which is new to existing Health & Safety requirements?
The guide confirms that existing legislation, deriving from the Health & Safety at Work Act (1974), does in fact apply to at-work road risks. It highlights a number of issues which fleet operators will now have to address before creating their at-work Health & Safety policies. It calls on companies to:
- Assess the competency of drivers
- Evaluate at work driver training requirements and ensure drivers know how to carry out basic maintenance checks
- Ensure employees are fit and healthy to drive
- Ensure that vehicles – both company cars and privately owned cars are used on business trips – are fit for the purpose
- Ensure those vehicles are maintained in a safe and fit condition with safety equipment properly fitted and maintained, and that drivers have access to information that will help them reduce risks
- Ensure car and van ergonomics are considered in compiling vehicle choice lists
- Ensure journeys are thoroughly planned, work schedules are realistic and that enough time is built into business trips.
- Ensure that staff are not put at risk from fatigue caused by driving excessive distances without appropriate breaks and that sufficient consideration is given to adverse weather conditions when planning journeys.
It is clear that guidance requires a far higher standard of risk assessment for work related road safety than that which the vast majority of companies currently have in place.
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