Protecting You And Your Staff On The Road - Health And Safety At Work

Many employers will agree with David Cameron, that a decade of Health and Safety rules and regulations intended to protect people have in fact simply overwhelmed businesses with extra red tape. Whilst the Government have announced a review of the current rules, which we hope will bring an end to extreme examples of health and safety gone mad such as the tragic case of the ten year old boy allowed to drown by community police officers who were not "trained" to go into the water or schools banning children from playing conkers in the school yard, employers will still need to understand and be aware of their legal responsibilities to take care of the health and safety of their staff.

One area which is often underestimated, or overlooked, by employers is ensuring the safety of staff on the road during the course of their employment. The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 also explicitly includes driving as an "at work" activity. This covers not only professional drivers and those in a company car, but will also catch the self employed, occasional as well as regular drivers and drivers that use their own vehicles.

With the government's plans to raise the national speed limit on motorways from 70 to 80 mph, what must employers do to ensure that they are complying with their health and safety obligations?

Employers must first understand which driving journey will be caught within the ambit of the "at work" definition. Some of these include the not so obvious, such as;

One-off journeys to client meetings, events, conferences etc. Casual deliveries or calls made on the way to the usual place of work. Site visits that are not the employee's usual place of work. It is important for employers to provide their staff with effective written policies for the management of work-related road safety. A recent study by the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) found that the main issues affecting workers driving during the course of their employment were;

Fatigue Time pressure In-vehicle distractions e.g. Mobile phones. To help combat these, the TRL have suggested;

Driver training Group discussions Rewards for accident free driving In-vehicle data recorders Additionally, employers will have various administrative tasks to comply with to ensure that they are legally compliant, including keeping up to date records which include driving licences. This in itself can present problems, such as manually tracking employee's licences, updating those records and...