HEALTH AND SAFETY AT WORK

MAGAZINE.

DRIVE TO ARRIVE:

By Mike Everley

The role of defensive driving

Background

According to the Association of British Insurers, one in every three new cars delivered to companies will be involved in an accident during the period of a year. Approximately 95% of these accidents being due, in part, to the behaviour of the drivers involved. Risk management techniques require action to be taken in order to reduce these human and financial losses. Along with ensuring the suitability and good working order of the vehicles supplied, employers need to consider the human aspects involved. Defensive driving and driver awareness training aims not only to improve the driving abilities of employees, but also to help them compensate for the bad driving of others on the roads. The primary aim being to change the attitude of the trainee and to make them more aware, as drivers, of their vehicle and surroundings.

Many improvements have been made to vehicles in order to make them safer and to better withstand an impact. These include: provision of front and rear seatbelts, the incorporation of airbags, side impact bars and ABS braking systems. However; little hasbeen done with regard to the human element. For most people training ends with the acquisition of a driving licence. Yet, according to Bob Smalley, RoSPA's Chief Examiner and Manager of Driver Services, "safety ultimately comes down to drivers; in art to their attitude; part to the product they are driving; but primarily to their ability to understand and put into practice defensive driving skills".

Problem

One of the major difficulties for studies related to injures to employees whilst on the public road concerns obtaining accurate statistics. Article 9 of the European Union Framework Directive (89/391/EEC) requires all occupationally related fatal injuries to employees and those which involve more than 3 days absence from or incapacity for normal work to be recorded and reported to the appropriate authorities. In Britain; most personal injury accidents which occur as a result of road traffic accidents are excluded from the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995, although they must be reported to the police and recorded by the employer for insurance and other purposes. Unfortunately, neither the police nor the Department of Transport statistics can identify those injuries which occur as a result of work. According to the Health and Safety Commission's Consultative Document Draft proposals for the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations, "most of our EU partners collect such information and this is but one area where international comparisons of statistics are currently difficult". Unfortunately the new Regulations only extended the reporting requirements relating to road traffic accidents in a relatively minor way and therefore failed to effectively deal with this problem.

Tired Truckers

One area in which evidence is mounting of where human error is leading to an increase in road accidents concerns lorry drivers who are working illegal numbers of hours. According to a report by Marie Woolf, in the Observer (22 October 1995), "haulage firms prompted by the recession to cut costs to the minimum are pushing drivers to break the law or face dismissal.... Driver's records showed working weeks of 90-plus hours; one driver's paysheet indicated he had worked for 23 hours 50 minutes in a single day, taking only 1 hour 15 minutes as rest". Obviously such tired drivers are not only a danger to themselves, but also to other road users including other companies' employees. Driver awareness training aims to increase the other driver's chances of escaping such an encounter intact.

A nationwide survey carried out by the United Road Transport Union found that 40% of truck drivers had been asked to drive beyond the legal limit of 10 hours a day and that, on average, British truck drivers now work more than 60 hours a week, which is 21 hours a week longer than the EU average. Methods for fooling the tachograph, which monitors hours driven and rests taken, include: removing the fuse, putting putty on the stylus and rigging up a wire to record bogus rest periods.

In 1994 there were 14,566 accidents involving articulated lorries and between 600 to 1000 people die each year in accidents involving HGVs, although the percentage of these carrying out work-related activities, such as driving between sites or visiting clients, isunknown due to lack of reporting arrangements, and it is estimated, by the Sleep Research Laboratory at Loughborough University, that at least 20% of these deaths are caused by lorry driver fatigue. Northampton police stress that other drivers should be constantly on the lookout for the warning signs. Adding that "if you're following a truck that weaves or swerves, it's a good indication that the driver may have been working excessively long hours or is tired". Further evidence of the relationship between lane deviation and driving hours is contained in Fatigue and Driving (edited by Laurence Hartley and published by Taylor and Francis).

In addition to taking action to deal with drivers who are suffering from fatigue and stress related symptoms such as "road-rage", the other driver has to take into account the roadworthiness of other vehicles on the road. The pressure group BRAKE, for example, is campaigning against dangerous lorries. BRAKE is led by the daughter of a schoolteacher who was crushed to death by a lorry with seven defective brakes in May 1992. The company who operated the vehicle was fined £2,350 for a number of offences, including allowing a vehicle to be operated with defective brakes and defective steering and in a dangerous condition. The driver was convicted of causing death by reckless driving.

The owner of a heavy truck which went out of control on a steep hill and caused the death of 6 people at Sowerby Bridge was fined £5000 after pleading guilty to using a heavy goods vehicle with defective brakes. The inexperience of the driver, who was killed in the accident, was also cited as a contributory factor. The braking systems on all eight wheels were found to be defective. The company argued that it had a system of inspection far better than recommended by the makers and that "there was no evidence that the brakes were applied at all".

A Risk Management Approach

Organisations who have employees travelling regularly on the public roads between sites or visiting clients, suppliers or other companies have a responsibility towards ensuring the health and safety of those employees and that of other people who might be affected by the actions of their employees. Obviously this is not as easy when the employee is on a public highway and away from the employer's direct control. But, just because it is less easy does not mean that a risk management approach is either impossible or unjustified. With flatter structures in most organisations, the death or injury of a valuable employee on the roads is as great a potential loss as their death or injury in the actual workplace. Therefore; taking action to reduce the risk of such an occurrence is both economically justifiable and morally satisfying. From a legal standpoint it also demonstrates that the organisation has taken the action that a reasonable organisation would take to deal with a foreseeable risk.

The general safety management approach suggested by the Health and Safety Executive in Successful Health and Safety Management (HS(G)65) can be applied equally as well to this specific problem and has the effect of integrating the management system for dealing with road safety into the organisation's overall safety management system. The engine driving the HSE safety management model is the setting of objectives and performance standards and measuring actual performance against those standards. Evaluation of theresults leading, via a continuous improvement loop, to the setting of new objectives and performance standards.

Successful Health and Safety Management also introduces the notion of the 4Cs, control, co-operation, communication and competence, to which we can add the further 2Cs of culture and commitment.

As with other health and safety issues, a risk management approach to reducing the injuries to members of staff on the roads involves the following steps:

Identify the hazards

Which members of staff travel between sites

and to other locations for work-related reasons?

How often do they do it? Do they use a

company vehicle or their own? What is the

roadworthiness of the vehicle? What training

have they received?

Assess the risks

Given the above factors, assess the risks

in each case and identify the high risk cases

which need immediate attention.

Introduce the controls

Can some of the journeys be reduced or

eliminated? Can vehicle maintenance be

improved? Could guidance on the need

for rest breaks be issued? Should additional

driver training be provided? (You can even

obtain a defensive driving interactive

programme on CDROM).

Monitor

Compare figures for vehicle accident rate prior

to the introduction of the controls with the

figures following the introduction of the controls.

Keep a regular check on the figures to

determine trends and to establish if and when

additional controls, such as refresher training,

are needed.

Evaluate and review

Have you achieved your objectives? can

further reductions in the vehicle accident rate be

achieved?

It should never be forgotten that safe driving ultimately boils down to a question of attitude. Employers need to recognise that on modern roads it is not enough for their employees to have correct attitudes, they must also have the skills to anticipate and deal with the consequences arising from the bad attitudes of other road users.

A defensive attitude leads to the prevention of accidents despite hazardous conditions and the uncertain driving of others. It injects a degree of control over an otherwise uncertain environment and, as a result, can also lead to a reduction in the level of stress experienced by the driver. Defensive driving achieves this level of control throughensuring the driver has knowledge of him\herself, the vehicle and the environment. For example:

Self

What are your skills, limitations and

physical condition? How tired are you?

When will you need a break?

Vehicle

What is its condition? How quickly can it

stop? What emergency equipment is on board?

Did you check all the safety features before

setting out?

Environment

Is it light or dark? How wet\shiny is the road?

What is the road surface like? What are the

weather conditions? How close is the car

behind\in front? How is the driver behind\

in front\in the distance behaving? What are

they likely to do next? What is the worse

possible thing that could happen next and

how could you best deal with it?

By thinking all of the time about your own physical and mental state, about the condition of the vehicle and about the environment and other drivers, not only are you more likely to arrive at your destination safely, but you are more likely to enjoy your journey.

Mike Everley

June 1996