Work-related road risk belongs in the workplace safety system.
Driving for work is the single most dangerous activity most workers do — yet serious work-related road collisions sit outside the reporting system that has reduced almost every other category of workplace harm. We support changing that.
“Work-related road risk falls squarely within the Health and Safety at Work Act — yet because road traffic law and the police take the lead, it sits outside the reporting, data and enforcement architecture that has reduced almost every other category of workplace harm.”
RoSPA strongly supports giving work-related road risk the prominence it deserves. Our position is straightforward: serious work-related road collisions should be reportable under RIDDOR (the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations), in the same way as serious incidents in every other workplace.
This is, first and foremost, a case about data. You cannot target, manage or reduce a risk you cannot see. Until work-related collisions are recorded systematically, employers, regulators and government are all working without the one thing that has driven safety improvement everywhere else — a reliable picture of what is actually happening, and why.
The same harm, recorded two different ways
Two identical collisions — one in a depot yard, one on a public road — are treated and recorded completely differently. One enters the workplace safety system. The other does not.
On-site workplace incidents
Reportable, recorded, analysed and enforced. Systematic data has driven steady, year-on-year reductions for four decades.
Work-related road collisions
Investigated at the roadside for culpability, then a closed file. No legal requirement to report them as workplace deaths — so the lessons are lost.
What the evidence shows
of responding officers do not complete the journey-purpose field on the STATS19 collision report — so we rarely know which collisions were work-related.
of all vehicles on the road are estimated to be driven for work — the majority of them vans and grey-fleet cars with far lower oversight than logistics.
of RIDDOR reporting show the principle in action: once on-site harm was measured properly, it was managed — and it has fallen ever since.
A shared call across road safety
This is not a position held in isolation. RoSPA stands alongside others making the same case to government, each from a different angle — reflecting how broadly the gap is now recognised.
The data gap is the core problem: risks that cannot be measured cannot be managed, and zero-harm strategies cannot work without them.
Reporting drives accountability: because collisions are not RIDDOR-reportable, many organisations never bring road-risk data to their boards.
Road deaths deserve the same learning culture as rail: every rail fatality triggers an inquiry; a road death gets a roadside file and is closed.
What we are calling for
A targeted extension of RIDDOR to serious work-related road collisions — a relatively minor regulatory change with a major safety return. This is about data and learning, not new roadside enforcement.
- Record serious work-related road collisions
Bring fatalities and specified injuries from work-related vehicle use into RIDDOR, on public roads and private premises alike.
- Close the data gap that undermines the strategy
The Road Safety Investigation Branch and the proposed Work-Related Road Safety Charter both depend on data we do not currently collect. Without a baseline, there is no way to measure progress.
- Level the field across fleet-using sectors
Logistics already manages road risk closely. Reporting would extend that culture to the van and grey-fleet operators who carry much of the risk with far less oversight.
- Avoid duplication
Reporting can be linked to the existing police-report process, so safety-conscious operators see little new burden — many already treat collisions as if they were reportable.