The Largest Single Risk

For many organisations, driving is the activity most likely to kill an employee. A substantial proportion of all road fatalities involve someone driving for work, and yet driving is frequently managed less rigorously than tasks carrying a fraction of the risk.

Why it is under-managed

• It happens off site, unsupervised and unobserved.
• Everyone drives, so it feels ordinary rather than hazardous.
• The vehicle is often the employee's own, which creates a false sense that it is not the organisation's concern.
• Incidents are handled as motor insurance claims rather than as safety incidents, so they never reach the safety statistics or the investigation process.
• Pressure to arrive is built into schedules and appointment times without anyone examining whether the journey is achievable safely.

The duty

Work-related driving is work. The organisation's duties for the health and safety of employees apply on the road as much as on site, and they extend to journeys made in employees' own vehicles on work business. Road traffic law sits alongside that duty rather than replacing it: complying with the speed limit does not discharge a duty to ensure the journey is reasonable.

If an organisation would not allow an unassessed high-risk task on site, it should ask why an unassessed 500-kilometre drive at the end of a working day is treated differently.