A 'Driving for Work' Summit was held this month to identify means of improving occupational road safety. The event was hosted at the London HQ of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) by the team behind the Driving for Better Business (DfBB) campaign. Involved were fleet chiefs, industry associations and insurance company representatives including members from the Department for Transport, Highways England, the ACFO, BVRLA and the FTA. To identify ways of encouraging better road safety, fleet management and procurement, fleet chiefs from employers such as Essex County Council, Michelin and Network Rail exchanged views with safety-focused organisations including HDI Global, IAM RoadSmart, the Transport Safety Commission and more. RoadSafe has worked closely with Highways England to deliver the Driving for Better Business campaign. Adrian Walsh, executive director of RoadSafe, said: 'Around a third of road traffic collisions involve a person at work, so there is clearly more that can be done by public and private sector fleets working together and in tandem with employers' organisations, government and its agencies and road safety experts to support and promote good practice.î The Summit's engagement of key governmental, public and private sector stakeholders lays groundwork for a major work-related road safety campaign scheduled for launch in the springtime. The forthcoming campaign builds upon recommendations made in the Transport Safety Commission's March 2015 report (UK Transport Safety: Who Is Responsible?) and the government's road safety statement of December 2015 (Working Together To Build A Safer Road System) which calculated the cost of road collisions to individuals, society and the economy to exceed £16.3 billion per year. 'Much information and advice is available and this Summit focused on how that knowledge can be made more readily available,î added Walsh. 'Our new programme is intended to accelerate the uptake of road safety initiatives by major fleets and SMEs operating company cars, 'grey fleet' and light vans to reduce the number of collisions involving drivers on business journeys.î Some initiatives expected to be seen in the reinvigorated campaign include:
- Encouragement of fleets to use the online Fleet Safety Benchmarking project
- Motivation of major fleets with work-related road safety programmes to spread their knowledge through their supply chain to smaller organisations
- Recommending fleets adopt vehicles equipped with Advanced Driver Assistance Systems
- Promoting fleet adoption of crash avoidance technology e.g. Autonomous Emergency Braking, electronic stability control
- Introduction of new vehicle buying standards and updated safety feature guidance
- Increasing awareness of the European New Car Assessment Programme's star ratings based on vehicle safety
