Occupational Road Risk and Driving Assessment
phd can offer specialist driver traing for the staff of companies and organisations.
• Taking action to prevent ‘at work’ vehicle accidents means committing some additional resources, but the potential financial savings can be very significant indeed.
• The true costs of road accidents to organisations are nearly always significantly higher than the resulting insurance claims. HSE research into workplace accidents generally (The Costs of Accidents - HSG96) suggests that, for every £1 recovered through insurance, between £8 and £36 may be lost via uninsured costs.
• While organisations may be able to recover vehicle damage costs through insurance, many other costs may not be recoverable. These include: lost time in wages and salaries; lost orders and output; administrative costs; legal fees; and costs due to other kinds of businessinterruption.
• These costs (or rather, losses) come straight off the organisation's bottom line, reducing its profits or surplus.
• Many of the resources required to put a management system in place to manage work related road risks should already be available to enable the organisation to meet its normal occupational health and safety obligations.
• Although some initial extra costs may be incurred (e.g. in training managers and drivers; in setting policies and implementing new standards, higher specification vehicles and their maintenance, or in adjusting routes and work schedules for safety purposes), these are most likely to be offset by benefits such as reduced accident losses, less lost staff time, lower insurance premiums and improvement in business efficiency generally, as well as better staff morale and company image.
• Health and Safety law focuses primarily (but not exclusively) on the duties of employers to establish safe systems of work. Key duties include undertaking risk assessments and having in place H&S management systems to ensure safe systems of work.
• The HSE Guide, "Driving at Work" (ref INDG382) makes it clear that "health and safety law applies to on-the-road work activities and the risks should be effectively managed within a health and safety system".
