| The Current Environment |

Changes to Corporate Manslaughter laws could spell trouble for employers whose staff are involved in serious road traffic accidents. The changes, which came into force on 6 April 2008, could leave your company open to prosecution for gross negligence – even if no company car is involved!

RoSPA launched its campaign for the Managing Occupational Road Risk (MORR) in 1996.  The HSE have concluded that “between 25% and 33% of all serious and fatal road traffic incidents involve someone who was at work at the time”.  This means that in 2001, between 862 and 1,035 people were killed in road accidents, in which somebody was ‘at-work’.

The risk of serious or fatal injury experienced (and created) by those who are required to drive on the road as part of their work remains a largely unrecognised health & safety issue - even though it is clear that simple control measures can produce major human and financial cost savings. 

Businesses need to have a clear understanding of the risks involved when their staff are driving for work-related purposes and ensure that they extend the arrangements which they should already have in place to deal with other aspects of health & safety to road safety performance.

According to research carried out by Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA):

• car and van drivers who cover 25,000 miles each year as part of their job are likely to be at almost the same risk of being killed at work as those working in mining and quarrying;
• from 3,500 road accident fatalities every year, it is estimated that between 800 and 1,000 occur in accidents involving people who are at work at the time, compared to around 350 other notifiable fatal accidents per annum;
• HSE guidance states that employers have duties under health & safety laws to assess these risks and take ’reasonably practicable’ steps to ensure ’safe systems of work’;
• companies that take action to promote the safety of their staff whilst driving will achieve major cost savings, improve their image, and make a significant contribution to meeting UK road safety targets.

To ensure that a business has the capacity to address occupational road risk (ORR) systematically and to achieve a cycle of continuous performance improvement, they are advised to make sure that:

• clear corporate ORR goals and objectives are communicated throughout the business;
• key people are trained and made accountable for achieving such goals;
• there is a planned approach to reducing risk (informed by risk assessment and supported by standards, targets, and timescales);
• there is effective monitoring of both management and driver performance; and;
• the business is committed to periodic performance review to feed back lessons learned and address weaknesses.