Frequently Asked Questions

The risk of death per hour while using the roads is many times higher than the risk per hour in the rest of everyday life. Key points include:

• Up to a third of all road crashes involve someone who is driving for work.
• More employees are killed in work-related road crashes than in all other occupational accidents combined.
• The risk of dying in a road collision while driving for work is considerably greater than that of almost any other occupational task.
• Journey-related risk factors include: the time of day, the time allowed for the distance to be covered, suitable breaks, environmental conditions (weather, darkness, road condition, limits and restrictions), how breakdowns and emergencies are handled, and route choice for the vehicle type.
• Driver-related risk factors include: age, licence, experience and familiarity with the vehicle, distractions (sat-nav, mobile phones, eating, drinking, passengers, smoking, tuning the radio), impairment through tiredness, alcohol, drugs or medication, eyesight, stress, concentration, seatbelt and restraint use, attitude to other road users, and awareness of risks and violations such as speeding.
• Vehicle-related risk factors include: roadworthiness, safe and secure load carriage, vehicle type and suitability for the route, use of built-in safety features, and adherence to speed limits.

This list is not exhaustive and will vary between businesses. It is important that employees who drive for work are familiar with company policies covering all aspects of risk relevant to your organisation.

There is no legal definition of ‘work-related road safety’, but it relates to managing the risks that employees and the self-employed face, and create, when driving, riding or walking on the road in order to do their job. It is often referred to as Managing Occupational Road Risk (MORR), at-work road safety or driving for work — these terms are interchangeable.

In the UK it does not normally include commuting (travelling between home and the usual place of work), except where an employee travels from home to a work location that is not their normal place of work.

Work-related road safety covers risks faced and created by people whose job is driving (LGV and PSV drivers, for example), as well as the much larger group who drive at some point to do their job, such as travelling to an appointment. This includes people who use their own vehicle for work. It also includes anyone who rides a motorcycle or bicycle for work, and at-work pedestrians — not just those doing road works or vehicle recovery, but the wide range of people whose jobs bring them into proximity with moving traffic.

Work-related road safety also links to vehicle safety in the workplace, where a significant number of people are killed or seriously injured each year in workplace transport incidents.

Do the rules, policies and procedures that apply to staff using a company vehicle also apply to staff who use their own private vehicle for work? Does the employer have the same legal responsibilities and liabilities — and if so, should we insist on annual servicing, copies of documentation, and so on?

Answer

Yes. Employers owe the same duty of care under health and safety law to employees driving their own vehicles as they do to company-owned or lease-hired vehicles. The law requires them to assess risks and take reasonably practicable precautions. They need to ensure that vehicles used on company business are fit for purpose (for example, avoiding carrying unsecured goods or equipment in cars) and in a safe condition, and that drivers are properly licensed, insured, fit and competent. Work-related journeys must be managed in the same way as journeys in a company vehicle.

The test of compliance is one of ‘reasonableness’. Where company and lease vehicles are procured and serviced centrally, it is easier for the employer to specify safety requirements and check matters such as servicing. Where employees use their own vehicles, the employer should remind them that they must comply with road traffic law, have business use on their motor insurance, hold a valid MOT, and have the vehicle serviced in line with the manufacturer’s instructions. They should also remind drivers and line managers about daily and periodic vehicle condition checks.

Managers do not, however, need to tie themselves up in meaningless administration, especially where the effort is disproportionate to any safety gain. They might, for example, carry out periodic spot checks of service records, and examine these when investigating any accidents or incidents.

We are developing an occupational road risk strategy for our company drivers. Guidance says a risk assessment should be carried out — but should this extend to every vehicle trip? Is it reasonable to ask every driver to fill in a pro-forma before each business journey?

Answer

There is advice on carrying out risk assessment in the HSE’s guidance on driving and riding for work. It is not necessary for drivers to complete a written risk assessment for every journey, but they should plan their routes, including places for rest breaks. Where decisions about these things rest with the driver, they need to be empowered to make a dynamic assessment. The aim is to avoid meaningless bureaucracy and form-filling, and instead develop approaches that genuinely help managers and drivers make sound decisions about controlling risk.

In general, employers should carry out a suitable and sufficient generic assessment of the various driving tasks undertaken in their organisation (delivering goods, travelling to meetings, call-outs, emergency response, vehicle recovery, courier delivery, and so on), looking at the safety-critical features of the journey, the vehicle and the driver/rider that are likely to increase the chance of a crash.

This can then be used to prioritise areas for intervention and to choose control options — from avoiding the journey altogether (for example through remote communication), to safer journey design, fit-for-purpose and well-maintained vehicles, and driver training. For regular, predictable journeys, the line manager and driver can build on the generic assessment to examine routing and timing in more detail and fine-tune controls, linking these to site transport risk assessment where vehicles are entering other organisations’ premises.

How much of the risk relates to people travelling to and from their place of work, and what can employers do about it?

Answer

Commuting is not normally covered by health and safety law in the same way as at-work driving. However, employers’ duties of care do affect commuting safety, in that they should not impair an employee’s capacity to drive home safely — for example by causing undue fatigue or imposing distractions.

Employers can influence commuting risk in several ways: reducing exposure by allowing home working; facilitating use of public transport; organising transport and car sharing; and providing driver training to improve drivers’ and riders’ ability to cope. This links closely with mainstream MORR from a business-case angle, since the impact of an employee road casualty on operations is much the same regardless of the precise context in which it occurs — it is the same loss.

One major motor manufacturer, for example, was so concerned about the casualty rate among young employees riding motorcycles to work (and in their leisure time) that it set up a motorcycle club on site and engaged ex-police riders as instructors and to raise awareness. In its broader sense, this reflects the ‘24/7 safety’ approach — caring about employees’ safety, and that of their relatives and dependants, around the clock. An injury to an employee’s child, for instance, is likely to lead to that person being absent from work in much the same way as an injury to the employee themselves.

Do employers’ responsibilities for avoiding fatigue relate only to vocational drivers working long hours, or also to employees required to work long hours and then drive home fatigued? Should employers provide rest facilities after long shifts? And what might be a maximum working day beyond which someone is too tired to safely drive home?

Answer

The HSE’s guidance on driving and riding safely for work states that health and safety law does not apply to people commuting (travelling between home and their usual workplace), unless they are travelling from home to somewhere that is not their usual place of work.

However, the boundary between at-work driving and commuting is not always clear cut. In one well-known case, a company was fined after a worker crashed and died while driving home following a third consecutive shift of nearly 20 hours. The worker was thought to be suffering from chronic fatigue and to have fallen asleep at the wheel. The firm admitted breaches of health and safety law in failing to ensure the health of workers and the public, and the court found it had failed to monitor the hours employees worked. The case was notable because the firm admitted breaching health and safety legislation even though the driver died outside working hours; the employee had worked many days without a break, for long hours, on very little sleep, and a daily record of hours was kept — so managers were judged to have been aware of the hours worked.

The guiding principle is that employers should periodically review driver fatigue, during both at-work driving and commuting, and develop measures to guard against it. They should also help employees understand the risks and plan journeys to avoid fatigue. It is hard to prescribe a safe maximum, but requirements stemming from working-time rules may be relevant. The basic rule is that if an employee feels dangerously fatigued or sleepy, they should not drive.

Answer

The police ask questions at the scene of road crashes about whether drivers are at work. When investigating serious road crashes, they follow the Road Death Investigation Manual, which indicates that the HSE should be contacted when there is sufficient indication that failures in safety management by the employer have significantly contributed to the incident, those failures cannot be addressed by the ‘cause and permit’ provisions in road traffic legislation, and the risks are foreseeable and beyond the direct control of the driver.

The Health and Safety at Work Act has been used in this context on occasion, but the main emphasis after road traffic accidents or offences remains enforcement of road traffic law. Most injuries sustained in at-work road crashes are not currently reportable by employers under RIDDOR (the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations), except for injuries during delivery operations, vehicle recovery, and loading and unloading. RoSPA and ScORSA believe that work-related road injuries should be reportable under RIDDOR — you can read more on our RIDDOR position page.

The HSE continues, where necessary, to take enforcement action on workplace transport offences. It is also worth remembering that employees can claim under Employers’ Liability (Compulsory Insurance) for injuries sustained in at-work road crashes.

Answer

The police record journey purpose when investigating reported road accidents (although the accuracy of that data is not certain), and various studies over the years have produced fairly consistent estimates. The HSE estimates that more than a quarter of all road traffic incidents may involve somebody who is driving as part of their work at the time.

On this basis, RoSPA is confident that the overall estimate — that between a quarter and a third of road crashes are work-related — is sufficiently robust to give a broad indication of the scale of the problem. This is also part of the reason we support making serious work-related collisions reportable under RIDDOR: better data would replace estimates with an accurate picture.

I am writing a policy for the use of personal vehicles for business use. One of the main areas of dispute is endorsements: if a driver has penalty points, where do we stand as the employer if they have an accident while travelling on business? Should we set a limit on points?

Answer

You should track licences and require drivers to inform you if they receive penalty points, as part of your MORR risk assessment and monitoring. Drivers with points may need further assessment and training, and it makes sense to check their licences more frequently than those of other drivers.

Many organisations use a graded response. Early points might prompt a discussion with the line manager about what happened and how to avoid it in future. Drivers who gain further points may be demonstrating more persistent poor driving, or have committed a more serious offence, so other options — driver training, a change to the driving task, or disciplinary action — may be appropriate. Drivers who continue to accrue points despite this are not responding to efforts to help them, and the employer should consider options such as specific further training, moving them to non-driving duties, or disciplinary action, depending on the circumstances.

Drivers who are close to disqualification will, at that point, no longer be able to drive; your policy should set out the action that will be taken if this happens, which may include dismissal. If you act reasonably on what you know, you will have a defence in the event of an accident.

I have a company car. I noticed a nail in my tyre, and the company is refusing to pay for the repair on the basis that upkeep is my responsibility. There is nothing in my contract stating I am responsible for repairs that weren’t my fault. Are they breaching health and safety law? My job involves driving a substantial distance each day.

Answer

Company cars are provided under many different arrangements, but the employer’s duty of care is broadly the same however the car is supplied — lease car, company-owned vehicle, occasional hire car, pool car, cash option or ‘user-chooser’ car. The duties are also the same if an employee uses their own vehicle for work.

The law states that vehicles must be roadworthy. The employer’s duty of care means that, as part of their policy for managing work-related road safety, they must ensure vehicles are in a fit condition — for example by arranging regular servicing (or ensuring drivers pay for it) and ensuring drivers carry out daily and weekly checks on safety-significant points such as lights, tyres, glass and fluids.

Where drivers use vehicles under allowance schemes, this usually includes the cost of servicing and repairs. Under many lease-hire arrangements, the supplying company has service arrangements with named garages as part of the contract. Some employers require employees to pay an element of the insurance excess, often to encourage care of the vehicle, although linking this to ‘fault’ is difficult and can lead to disputes — and can affect accident and incident reporting, a vital source of information for monitoring fleet safety performance.

Health and safety law generally prohibits an employer from charging an employee for anything provided to enable them to meet statutory obligations — you cannot charge a worker for protective equipment or health and safety training, for example. Where work equipment is also used for domestic purposes, an employer may be within their rights to recover part of the cost, usually agreed through negotiation. For a pool car used only for work, it would be reasonable to say the employer could not charge for maintenance and repair; difficulty arises where the vehicle is also used for commuting or leisure. Keeping a careful record of when and where damage occurred is one way of establishing responsibility. The health and safety enforcing authorities are most unlikely to want to get involved in this sort of issue — a better course is to establish what is good practice in the fleet industry and present this as part of an overall business case for managing occupational road risk.

A local hospital trust collects meals from a production unit a few kilometres away in a 7.5-tonne refrigerated box van with a tail lift. It was previously driven by pool porters on a rota, with cover porters expected to cover absences. There were several serious incidents, including injuries from the tail lift and driving the vehicle under a canopy with insufficient headroom. The trust later appointed a full-time driver, but managers still treat driving the van as equivalent to driving a car and require cover porters to drive it in the driver’s absence — sometimes at a moment’s notice, perhaps for one week a year.

Answer

What you describe is clearly unsatisfactory and does not reflect good practice or the legal requirements for managing work-related road safety. The law permits a car licence holder to drive a vehicle up to 7.5 tonnes, but where those licence holders are employees required to drive as part of their work, health and safety law also applies. It requires the employer to assess the employee’s competence in driving this type of vehicle, which is very different from driving a car — including risk on the road and when manoeuvring around the site.

Assessing competence is not simply a question of checking qualifications such as past training or licence status; it should also involve checking the ability to drive a large vehicle of this type. There is nothing in health and safety law to prevent car licence holders from driving box vans up to 7.5 tonnes provided they are competent, but it would be far more sensible to require a C1 licence rather than just a car licence. At the very least, competence assessment should involve a licence check (repeated periodically), a check of physical fitness, and a practical assessment of driving ability in the box van.

Competence assessment should also address familiarity with the specific type and model of vehicle. From the incidents described, there could well be a case for additional training. From a site transport safety angle alone, it is vital that drivers understand site safety arrangements and can manoeuvre and reverse safely in confined spaces.

Skills need to be practised to remain effective, so there may still be an issue for trained drivers who only drive certain vehicles occasionally. These questions should be picked up in the periodic review of risk assessments — and certainly if the kind of incidents described are properly investigated. It sounds very much as if the trust could benefit from basic advice on Managing Occupational Road Risk, drawing on HSE guidance such as Driving at Work (INDG382) and Workplace Transport Safety: A Brief Guide (INDG199).