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5 May 2004 - TUC 'Safer Driving Pack' Aims to Reduce Work-Related Road Injuries

The TUC is publishing a new ‘safer driving pack’ to encourage employers to take their responsibility for employees on the road more seriously.   The TUC believes that employers are simply not doing enough to protect the health and safety of their employees who are out and about on the country’s roads.   All too often, says the leaflet, employers seem to think that if they’ve asked a member of staff to ‘drive safely’ then that’s their health and safety responsibilities met.

Every year:

• over 1,000 workers are killed in work-related road accidents

• an additional 7,500 suffer serious injury

The TUC is also concerned at the effect this has on the economy where official statistics put the annual cost of workers killed or injured on the roads at a massive £3.5 billion (that’s in addition to the £14 billion cost of poor health and safety in the UK’s shops, factories and offices).

The TUC believes that employers could do much more to reduce these figures by:

"Carrying out proper risk assessments for all mobile employees to cover factors like the regular and proper servicing of company vehicles, sensible route planning and the setting of achievable deadlines would help cut the number of sales reps, delivery drivers, and HGV drivers killed or injured each year."

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber commented:

"'Tired, stressed drivers with too many drops to make in too little time are not going to be particularly safe drivers. Bosses have a real responsibility for the safety of their roving staff and reducing unrealistic and unmanageable workloads for their drivers must become a top priority. Because many work-related road accidents are treated like any other road accident, many employers are never called to account.

'The UK does not have a fantastic health and safety record and early indicators suggest that the number of employees killed at work this year is likely to rise. Yet our worsening safety record comes at a time when we are seeing less enforcement of safety laws and a reduction in the level of fines handed out to bosses committing health and safety crimes. This can only have a detrimental effect on all workplace accidents."