Health, Safety and Environment

Campaign and Petition to Reduce Work Related Road Risks

17 April 2007

A substantial percentage of road crashes are known to be "at-work" and there is an increasing recognition that company policies and practices are a factor in crash involvement. The recent three year review into the National Road Safety Strategy has identified "work-related safety" as a key issue.

On average 20 people are killed weekly by work-related road crashes (UK Government statistics). Employers often cause or contribute to these deaths by excluding driving from their health and safety arrangements, placing responsibility on individual drivers' behaviour, not satisfying legal duties to assess/mitigate risk, pressurising by unreasonable targets, occupational hazards - long hours, stress, bullying, and not recognising driving is integral to many peoples’ work.

Health and Safety Executive annual work-related accidents/deaths statistics exclude work-related road incidents, so they do not count towards any health and safety improvements.

Trade Unions and many other organisation have been calling on the Government to act by making work-related road accident injuries and deaths to workers and members of the public from traffic incidents reportable under the Reporting of Injuries Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations, improving enforcement of employers’ statutory duties under existing health and safety legislation and enable the prosecution of negligent employers for health and safety offences and corporate killing on the road.

The CWU's two main employers operate two of the biggest fleets in the UK and EU, so we have a specific interest in terms of deaths and serious injuries occurring as a result of road crashes.

The Preston and District Workers Memorial Day Committee has launched a National E-Petition on the Prime Minister's 10 Downing Street Petition site as follows:

"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to 'Reduce Work-Related Road Risks'."

The deadline for signing the petition was 11 April 2008.

You can read the e-petition here: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/petitionforkaren/