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Raising Safety Standards
will Require Prosecutions
The boss of a vehicle management company is calling on the police and the
HSE to prosecute businesses and company drivers who cause accidents by
driving defective vehicles or breaching road safety laws.
“If we’re really serious about work-related road safety, then we need to
give the legislation some bite,” says Simon Hill, managing director of
Total Motion vehicle management. “At the moment, there is a lot of talk
and scaremongering but very little is actually being done to make
companies take action.”
According to Mr Hill, until they see that they have to a high proportion
of companies will not give fleet managers the funds they need to introduce
and manage proper risk management and duty of care policies, or the power
to penalise drivers who breach them.
“With only a few prosecutions so far, most of which have been related to
commercial vehicles rather than cars, directors just don’t see any
justification for spending the money the fleet managers want,” he says. “I
believe it will take some high profile cases to make them really take the
law seriously.”
However, Mr Hill doubts whether police forces have the resources or the
time to fully enforce the legislation.
“Our experience suggests police officers on the ground are not fully
focused on the issues and that, unless an incident is clear cut, there is
not sufficient manpower to investigate. After a recent incident involving
a client’s driver, I was told the case was unlikely to come to court
because the force was four to five months behind in its serious accident
investigations,” he explains.
“In terms of priorities, if the police have the manpower to stop drivers
using mobile phones, isn’t it just as important to stop drivers with
defective vehicles and check their employers’ policies?”
Mr Hill is also concerned about the conflicting messages coming from the
authorities, with the police saying they will refer to the HSE and the HSE
saying they have more important issues to deal with.
“It’s generally agreed that there are over 1,000 road deaths a year caused
by company drivers,” says Mr Hill. “Isn’t it time we stopped just talking
about how we’re going to make driving whilst at work safer and actually
did something about it?”
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