Let’s stop being negative about road risk and look at the positives!
Most of the articles I read seek to influence by pointing out the risks and consequences of poor road safety management. For example, if you fail to do X you will be non-compliant and risk serious consequences of fines, adverse publicity and bad karma. OK, I added the karma bit!
What is the reality? Yes there is a risk of fines when things go badly wrong. For example, in July/August 2016 Safety Express there is an article about a company being fined £815,000 following the death of a worker crushed by a refuse collection vehicle. OS&H Journal June 2016 has an article about a HGV driver sentenced after a road worker dies.
There will be accidents and incidents which result in death and serious injury because we are dealing with human beings. People who have feelings, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, attitudes and have the propensity to make excellent decisions v poor decisions same situation, different time or day.
When things go wrong it is important to learn from them and to make sure that interventions are put in place to prevent the same or similar incidents happening again. Hopefully, we are learning from incidents which have happened in other organisations and which afford us the opportunity to review our own policies, procedures and actual working practices.
The reality is, that if you are taking the time to read this, then you are already thinking about taking positive steps to manage risk. You are probably part of an organisation which takes work place safety seriously, learns from incidents, near misses and strives for an ongoing zero accident work place record.
Let’s move away from focusing upon negatives and celebrate what we are already doing to reduce on road risk. Well done to managers, staff and directors who, every day, are doing a fantastic job to keep their staff and other road users safe!
There is already a wealth of information available to help manage work place road safety such as information published by the Health and Safety Executive, for example Driving at Work.
Information about managing occupational road risk from organisations such as RoSPA.
Websites where you will find best practice and ideas to help you manage road safety and reduce your exposure to risk such as Brake the road safety charity, ORSA and ScORSA.
Free driving licence checks using the official Gov.UK site are also available.
Celebrate what you are doing well. Check out the sources of information available on the internet and from reputable organisations which can help you to identify risk and put in place control measures.
Sources of information and best practice which may give you ideas and hopefully prompt questions.
Do not allow yourself to get down trodden about the continual risk and consequences cycle. It is not rocket science, its road safety.
