With around a third of road deaths and serious injuries typically attributed to work-related activity each year, organisations have a clear responsibility to protect employees when they are driving. However, too many are still overlooking the risks associated with driving – often concentrating on other aspects of health and safety – despite it being the foremost occupational hazard.

WHY DO YOU NEED TO BOTHER ABOUT FLEET LEGAL COMPLIANCE?
Duties under the Law
Health & Safety at Work Act 1974
Employers have duties under health and safety law for on-the-road work activities. The Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 (HSW Act) states you must ensure, so far as reasonably practicable, the health and safety of all employees while at work. You must also ensure that others are not put at risk by your work-related driving activities. The self-employed have similar responsibilities.

Health & Safety Regulations 1999
The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require you to manage health and safety effectively. You must carry out an assessment of the risks to the health and safety of your employees, while they are at work, and to other people who may be affected by your organisation’s work activities.

You also have duties under road traffic law, e.g. the Road Traffic Act and the Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations, which are administered by the police, and other agencies such as the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA).
In most cases, the police will continue to take the lead on investigating road traffic incidents on public roads. HSE will usually only take enforcement action where the police identify that serious management failures have been a significant contributory factor to the incident.

Corporate Manslaughter & Corporate Homicide Act 2007
If one of your employees is killed for example while driving for work, and there is evidence that serious management failures resulted in a ‘gross breach of a relevant duty of care’, your company or organisation could be at risk of being prosecuted.
If an incident like this involves one of your vehicles prepare for some searching questions and interruptions to your normal business operations.

The possible outcomes if you don’t get it right are:

  • Major Disaster recovery issue in the business
  • Unlimited Fine (potentially millions of £’s)
  • Sentencing guidelines anything from £180k to £20 million pounds depending on seriousness of offence and size of organisation
  • Fine will be based on turnover NOT net profit
  • Negative Publicity Order included
  • Possible Jail sentence and disqualification for Directors

GETTING THE BASICS RIGHT
The safety and wellbeing of employees and members of the public for any fleet operation is paramount, with the two main areas of focus to achieve this are legal compliance and incident reduction.

Getting the fundamentals in place is critical to the success of a strategy and ensures an organisation is best placed to keep ahead of legislation changes. To improve road safety and reduce incidents, an organisation must be compliant and have the procedures in place first. There also needs to be an ongoing commitment because fleet risk is a constantly moving target. A one-off or periodic plan is simply not good enough because there will be constantly evolving demands both internally and externally, such as changes in legislation or the size, make-up and focus of the organisation. Any strategy needs to be agile, so it can react to this, stay ahead of the curve, and achieve a strong internal safety culture.

UNDERSTANDING THE WHY
Fleet risk management is very much about prevention and not the cure, but it would be wrong to simply assume that any issue is simply down to driver behaviour alone. There may be problems at a personal, operational or company level, so establishing root causes and taking a supportive approach is key to resolving any underlying issues. Organisations should avoid any kind of blame culture and instead adopt an approach that is focussed on understanding why something happened and providing appropriate support and interventions.

There are many reasons for increased risks within a vehicle operation. An organisation may be setting unrealistic targets or have the wrong processes in place, which are creating unnecessary dangers. When determining the root cause of an incident it is about analysing more than just the actions and attitude of the driver but also operational policies, pressures and constraint that could be affecting their ability to work safely. What processes are in place to tackle certain risks? Is this a recurring issue and how was it managed before? What steps have been taken with all parties involved?

Who are the drivers in your business?
HSE guidance makes no distinction regarding ownership
Applies to all driver types:

  • Company
  • Hire
  • Pool
  • Borrowed
  • Employee owned – The so called ‘Grey Fleet’
    – Cash allowance
    – Claiming expenses for Business Mileage
    – The cashier going to the bank in their own car

What do you need to be compliant
Following a driving at work incident causing death or life changing injury the Police in conjunction with the HSE/DVSA will be looking for;

  • Details of the driver
  • Licence checks
  • Driver Assessments and training records including induction training
  • Telematics data and management of outputs
  • Incident reviews
  • Vehicle checks carried out
  • Safe Driving at Work Policy and Driver handbook to check the quality and acceptability
  • Details of vehicle inspections and servicing
  • Journey planning

MOTORING INCIDENTS HAPPEN TO COMPLIANT COMPANIES
This incident was a shock to the employer when he received the phone call in the early morning:

  • 11 Sept 2019 at 12.30am
  • Lorry overturned blocking 3 lanes of the M6
  • Closed Motorway for 18 hours
  • Carriageway resurfaced due to diesel spillage
  • Cab went on fire
  • Driver had cuts and bruises. No Third Party injury
  • Truck and Fridge Trailer both total losses

This company had:

  • The Central Motorway Police Patrol Group ‘coming after them’ as promised by the Road Policing Sergeant
  • DVSA looking for a ‘win’ and scrutinised there:
    – Driver records including induction training
    – Tachograph records
    – Vehicle and trailer servicing schedules and records
    – Journey Management records
    – Safe driving at Work Policy
    – Drivers Handbook

As part of the investigation the client produced his Velocity Scotland Ltd Safe Driving at Work Policy and Drivers Handbook. The DVSA Inspector commented that they were one of the best he had seen and left. No further case to answer as far as the authorities were concerned.

This company was very lucky it was only the DVSA who called.