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Saving lives and reducing injuries...ON THE ROADRaising awareness of managing occupational road risk (MORR)
Why? With up to a third of crashes on Britain’s roads involving someone who is at work at the time, we campaign for managing occupational road risk (MORR) to be taken seriously by employers and regulators and provide practical help for employers. MORR makes sense for moral, legal and business reasons. “SAFED is about fuel-efficient driving and when you have a fleet the size of ours, if we can save just five per cent on fuel, that can amount to millions of pounds in savings a year. Having said that, the most important thing to us at BT is safety - making sure our people go home at the end of their shifts.”
Tony Holt, BT safety adviser for travel and transport. RoSPA trains BT drivers as part of the Government's Safe and Fuel Efficient Driving (SAFED) scheme What we did: Combining two of today’s biggest road safety challenges and with funding from the Department for Transport, we undertook the UK’s first major Young Drivers at Work project. This found that employers and young at-work drivers think the current learning-to-drive process is not adequate preparation for occupational motoring, and confirmed that employers would value a driving for work qualification (see www.rospa.com/roadsafety/youngdriversatwork/). Based on the findings, we began developing a Young Drivers at Work workshop, which will be supported by an online guide to aid its delivery. In Scotland, we worked with the Scottish Centre for Healthy Working Lives to run free seminars for Scottish-based businesses to raise the profile of MORR. We also led the way in establishing the Scottish Occupational Road Safety Alliance (ScORSA), and continued to encourage employers, including the Scottish Government, to develop MORR policies and request that sub-contractors do likewise. Our wide-ranging MORR resources and practical tools were expanded further. A new version of Driver Profiler was launched to help employers more easily identify “at risk” drivers and prioritise their training budgets; an e-learning system - an alternative or follow-up to in-vehicle training - was developed; and a Driver Theory Workshop was introduced. Courses were accredited for the Driver Certificate of Professional Competence qualification, a European requirement for bus, coach and lorry drivers. A new RoSPA Accreditation service was launched for companies seeking formal recognition of their own driver training courses. We also completed several MORR policy and procedural reviews for clients, and worked with some organisations on bespoke MORR projects. The RoSPA MORR Trophy was awarded to ScottishPower Fleet Business. Spotlight on...global working Our work to reduce road casualties stretched beyond the UK. We joined a new World Health Organisation road safety network for non-governmental organisations, completed our commitments for the European Road Safety Charter, and renewed our membership of the Charter with new commitments. Our driver training team delivered courses and consultancy in several countries, including in the Middle East, and our occupational safety adviser spoke at the First International Conference on Road Safety at Work in Washington DC.
Improving driving and riding standards What we did: Young and novice drivers remained at the top of our agenda. We developed the Young Drivers Assessment for 17-24-year-olds, which gives them an objective appraisal of their skills and attitude at the wheel, enabling them to take action to improve areas of concern. We submitted a comprehensive response to the Driving Standards Agency Learning to Drive consultation, which will result in fundamental reforms to learner training, the driving test and post-test training.
In Scotland, we worked closely with the Scottish Government as it developed Scotland’s Road Safety Framework to 2020 by hosting a conference for road safety professionals at which future casualty reduction approaches were discussed. Supporting RoSPA Advanced Drivers and Riders What we did: We collaborated with the Changemakers Foundation, a national charity which supports organisations looking to enhance their engagement with young people. A “young advocate” from Changemakers investigated why young people expressed little interest in advanced driving and how this might be improved. Her project included establishing a Facebook group to promote discussion. “Following the tragic death of our youngest son, we knew we had to do everything we could to prevent a similar accident devastating another family. We are very grateful to RoSPA for campaigning to prevent another precious young life being unnecessarily lost.”
Spotlight on...child safety in and around carsMark Goodwill, father of 18-month-old Iain who died in a driveway accident in 2007 After we were approached by the family of an 18-month-old boy who was struck and killed by a car on a driveway, we began investigating the safety of children in and around cars. Initial research highlighted a hidden problem of young children being killed or injured by cars on driveways, or when they were left alone inside cars. Information was developed for parents and the foundations laid for wider research.
Improving drivers’ and riders’ behaviour What we did: We continued to provide practical information and advice to road users on a massive scale through our websites, seminars, conferences and media presence, and by answering enquiries from members of the public. For example, the Road Safety Wales website - www.roadsafetywales.org.uk - which provides an overview of education, training and publicity activities, continued to be managed by our team in Wales. Working with its Road Safety Wales partners, the team also managed the provision of new and updated bilingual resources, in addition to managing a wide range of all-Wales projects.
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