Businesses must create a cultural environment around occupational road risk management in which employees take responsibility for their actions and are empowered to make the decision not to drive if they don’t feel safe.
Critically, there must be board-level buy-in to deliver an at-work driving safety culture across employers, but too often corporate attitudes and business operations failed to take into account occupational road risk management, ICFM’s second Masterclass heard.
What’s more, lawyer Kathy Halliday, a partner at Veale Wasbrough Vizards, told fleet decision-maker delegates that company directors were “foolish” not to “carefully manage” employees making business-related journeys because they could be personally liable and disqualified from holding a board position in the event of legal action against them as individuals, as well as against the organisation.
Andy Phillips, director, risk management, at Hampshire-based Applied Driving Techniques, told the Masterclass: “Drivers should be given knowledge and information so their level of safety awareness increases and if they don’t feel safe to drive then they should be empowered to make decisions for themselves and not drive.”
Too frequently, he said, no single person in an organisation “championed road safety” and often businesses operated in an environment that encouraged unsafe driving.