The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) is one of the world's leading safety organisations with more than 80 years' history of trying to reduce the carnage on Britain's roads.
Recently, the Society has pioneered the campaign to make company car and van drivers safer while seeking ways to improve driving standards generally. A registered charity, it also campaigns and gives advice on occupational safety, home safety, product safety, water and leisure safety and safety education.
One of RoSPA's greatest abilities has been to look ahead and identify where change will be needed to prevent accidents in future - or to identify accident problems which may not be as obvious as first thought.
Much of RoSPA's strength lies in the fact that it is not a single-issue safety group. The diversity of its knowledge means that it is able to act swiftly and professionally when safety issues cross the line from one specialist field to another. A good example of this is the Managing Occupational Road Risk (MORR) campaign that examines the dangers faced by people at work on the road, particularly company car and van drivers. Here, road safety and occupational safety are inextricably linked. RoSPA policies have been developed that will have both long and short-term benefits for those whose work takes them on to our roads.
It is not only those who are driving as part of their job who will be better protected - everyone else will also be safer as a result. An increasing number of businesses and organisations are realising the benefits of having to deal with fewer road accidents involving their employees and are at last doing something about it. Although accidents involving buses, coaches and goods vehicles appear in accident statistics, no official records have been kept of the thousands of crashes involving cars and vans being driven for work purposes.
RoSPA always believed this could be a serious 'hidden' accident problem and about six years ago announced that it estimated between 800 and 1,000 deaths on Britain's roads each year could in some way being linked with work. Many doubted that figure and refused to accept around a quarter of road deaths might be tied in with occupational safety problems.
But following continued pressure by RoSPA, the government called for an investigation and an independent work-related road safety task group backed the Society's findings. The group's report (The Dykes Report) recommended that employers should manage risk on the road as part of their overall management of health and safety at work - something RoSPA had called for since 1996.
RoSPA believes that for far too long employers have abdicated their responsibilities towards the people who work for them on the road. Many employees leave the factory or office to drive as part of their job without any thought by their bosses about whether they are safe. An employer who would ensure strict guidelines were followed for someone working a piece of heavy machinery on the shop floor, or who would assess the ergonomics of a computer operator's work station might completely ignore a rep's safety behind the wheel. This is despite the fact that a driver covering 25,000 miles a year as part of their job is more at risk of an accident than people employed in well-recognised hazardous industries such as quarrying or construction.
RoSPA wants every journey to be a managed journey. Line managers need to consider matters such as the selection of the correct vehicle for the job, planning safe routes and setting realistic schedules so that drivers do not have to speed or drive when they are tired. Alternative forms of transport such as planes and trains could be used more often and, as technology improves, phone and video conferencing investigated as an alternative to undertaking long journeys. Driver-development training offered by RoSPA for fleet drivers can have a major effect in reducing accidents when it is focused on a particular client's needs. The Society runs special courses for those with responsibility for fleets to help them to introduce road-risk management policies. RoSPA will carry out reviews at individual companies to accurately assess risks and work on the implementation of safety management systems while ensuring driver-training requirements are met.