Drivers could be weakest manslaughter link

News | HSW
27.11.2007

Safety experts and risk management specialists are warning that company drivers' failings could  be the spur for the first corporate manslaughter prosecutions when the new law takes effect next April.

A combination of high road death rates and police enforcement targets means fatalities involving drivers at work are likely to be the focus of corporate killing investigations.

"Watch out for your road traffic fleet," warned the Confederation of British Industry's head of health and safety, Janet Asherson, at last month's Health and Safety at Work conference (see Taking the lead: first HSW conference).

"I think HSE are properly looking at it as a sanction for the most onerous cases where there is gross negligence," she added, "but my feeling from talking to the road traffic enforcers is they are itching to use it. If anybody has duff cars badly maintained, people working excessive hours, and that can be tied back to a fatality, the police will be searching the records very keenly."

She was backed up by Richard Schooling, commercial director of fleet risk management consultancy Alphabet, who noted the police now check to see if drivers were travelling for business at the time of any accident. "With the corporate manslaughter Act, there will be the ability for them to have a more onerous and rigorous look at the employer," warned Schooling.

"If there is loss of life, the police would have a look and say 'is there corporate culpability?' And they would come and enquire of the employer if they had the policies and procedures to manage road risk."

To prepare for such investigations, organisations need to check they have clear rules for drivers on issues such as limiting hours on the road and banning use of mobile phones while driving, which employees sign to say they have read and understood, backed up by checks on company car drivers' licences, and even verification that employees' own cars used for occasional business travel are fit for purpose, Schooling counselled.

"The employer needs to make sure not only that people are aware of the rules but that they also try to enforce those rules," he said, "so you don't have line management actively dictating people should work extremely long hours and still be driving."

"If you can stand up in court and say 'we had a written policy and we've advised this person this many times and we've checked their licence and we've given them appropriate training' then you, as a corporate, are as protected as you can be."