Brake’s Global Fleet Champions campaign, in collaboration with a range of agencies around the globe, has co-launched an international report [1] calling on governments and the private sector to put road safety first when operating vehicles for work purposes, including goods vehicles and passenger carrying vehicles of all sizes, as well as vehicles being used to commute to work.
The report was released during the 3rd Ministerial Conference on Road Safety, held in Stockholm, Sweden, 19-20 February, and attended by Ministers from around the world. The conference included a significant focus on the role of the private sector in stopping road casualties and poisonous air from traffic, including through occupational safety and sustainability management.
In support of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals [2], the report recommends that:
- governments strengthen legislation relating to organisations operating vehicles and their drivers; and that governments improve data collection regarding work-related crashes and their causes;
- organisations operating vehicles have policies and procedures to manage road risk that are applied to their own workforce and when procuring road transport services, and that they influence their supply chains to do the same; and for these policies and procedures to include use of safe vehicles and management of driver safety.
The report also calls on corporations and governments using roads to report on their road ‘footprint’ through safety and sustainability reporting.
About a third of road traffic crashes in high-income nations are estimated to be work-related [3], and a significant number of deaths and injuries in low- and middle-income nations also involve vehicles being driven for work purposes, often with devastating consequences, such as the bus crash west of Nairobi, Kenya, in 2018 that killed more than 50 people [4].
Mary Williams OBE, chief executive of Brake and co-author of the report said: “This vital report is the first international report of its kind uniting voices in proclaiming the urgent need to address deaths and injuries on roads caused by a vehicle being driven for work purposes, which are a significant proportion of casualties on roads. Governments and employers need to step up urgently and take action, putting road safety centre stage of business decisions and occupational safety and sustainability reporting.”
Etienne Krug, Director at the World Health Organisation, in his preface to the report said: “I hope this report will play a valuable contribution to strengthen action on work-related road safety. I urge governments and organisations to read it and implement urgent actions to save lives.”
[1] Pratt, S., Williams, M., et al. (2020) Managing work-related road injury risk: Ensuring decent work conditions for those who drive for work and protecting other road users
[2] https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/
[3] European Transport Safety Council. https://etsc.eu/infographic-isnt-it-time-your-organisation-started-taking-road-safety-seriously/.
[4] BBC (2018). Kenya bus crash kills 50 on way to Kisumu. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-45807969