Health and Safety survey

Decision-makers in charge of medium and large fleets are getting to grips with managing occupational road risk, but those in charge of smaller fleets have a significant journey to make.

That is the main conclusion from an exhaustive online at-work driving safety survey conducted throughout 2005 by fleet software and occupational road safety experts Jaama.

More than 2,200 companies operating fleets of more than five vehicles responded to the survey with those taking part including managing directors, finance directors and HR managers as well as fleet operators. It is believed to be one of the largest ever road safety surveys yet carried out.

After tracking the responses throughout the year, Jaama managing director Jason Francis said: “With the significant amount of road safety publicity during 2005 this research shows that although there is still a huge lack of awareness amongst smaller fleets, duty of care awareness is improving.”

But, with a new Road Safety Bill due to reach the statute book before the summer, which features a raft of measures including tougher penalties for the use of hand-held mobile phones while driving and a new offence of causing death by careless driving, and a Corporate Manslaughter Bill also making its way through Parliament, fleets that have yet to put comprehensive road risk management strategies in place must act.

With Government, the police and the Health and Safety Executive all focused on a united approach to reduce the number of road crashes involving at-work drivers, Mr Francis said: “Our research concluded that larger fleets and those that have regular access to fleet information were reasonably well informed and generally had good policies in place. However, the vast majority of operators of small fleets - 90% of the respondents operated sub-200 vehicle fleets - were falling short of even basic requirements and it is this sector that we must educate further.”

By tracking the responses Jaama discovered that early last year 23% of companies were unaware of the HSE’s 24-page guide - ‘Driving at work: Managing work-related road safety’- which outlines the steps all companies should take, irrespective of fleet size, to implement a robust occupational road risk strategy. However, by the end of last year that figure had dropped to one-in-five businesses out of a substantially increased number of respondents.

Worryingly, the survey discovered that at the end of last year 40% of the respondents were aware of the HSE’s guidelines, but had still not implemented a road safety policy.

The survey also discovered that 15% of companies continued not to check employee driving licences and three-quarters of fleets did not monitor drivers’ hours.

A further area of concern is that many businesses that allow their staff to drive their own vehicles on work-related journeys do not undertake basic checks as advised by the HSE. These include the checking of MoT certificates on vehicles over three-years-old, that cars are insured for business use and vehicles are in a roadworthy condition.

Mr Francis explained: “It maybe that companies, particularly smaller companies where the use of privately-owned vehicles on business is perhaps more prevalent, do not realise that in the event of an incident the company and its bosses could be held liable.

“While our survey shows that many more companies have implemented road safety strategies during the course of last year, it also shows that many businesses still have a long way to go in ensuring compliance with HSE best practice and the law.”

This year, as in 2005, Jaama will continue its programme of occupational road safety seminars designed to show companies how to meet their duty of care responsibilities and simultaneously reduce costs.

Mr Francis said: “By managing occupational road risk and putting in place a cycle of continuous road safety improvement a company’s fleet efficiency will be improved as vehicle downtime and staff sickness levels will be significantly reduced and the organisation’s safety image will be boosted as the company’s drivers are also its ambassadors. In addition directors should not overlook the impact of staff viewing their employer as ‘caring’.”

Over the past 12 Jaama has trained more than 350 companies, many of them small fleets, in occupational road safety best practice. Templates for both fleet policy and car user guides are distributed at the seminars. Details of forthcoming seminars are available at jaama.co.uk

Mr Francis concluded: “By specifically targeting companies operating smaller fleets - the majority of organisations in the UK - we believe that Jaama is further improving the knowledge of occupational road safety and helping to spread fleet management best practice.”

	March 2005	December 2005
Unaware of the HSE Guidelines	23%	21%
Fully/partly aware of the guidelines but without a safety policy	42%	40%
Do not have an individual responsible for road safety	53%	49%
Do not check driving licences	15%	15%
Do not monitor drivers hours	78%	75%
Let employees use their own vehicle for business	68%	70%
Do not check MOT’s on employee owned vehicles	74%	68%
Do not check employees are insured for business use	22%	19%
Do not check any aspect of the vehicle condition	85%	79%