Driving for Work: Knowing the Risks

Around 40 million people hold driving licences in the UK. A large percentage of these licence holders will be on the roads driving for work. Therefore, it is important to know the hazards and risks involved with this and what we can do to reduce them. So, what is classed as driving for work? This can be simply getting into a vehicle to deliver a letter to a client a few miles away from your permanent place of work or driving 200 miles to visit a client.

In 2020 a survey conducted on behalf of Highways England and RoadSafe revealed that 29% of all road fatalities and 21% of all road casualties involved drivers that were working at the time. To put this into perspective, that equates to over 500 fatalities involving someone who was driving for work.

The Health and Safety Executive states that “as an employer you must manage health and safety risks to workers who drive a vehicle…on the road as part of a work activity. Health and safety law applies to work activities on the road in the same way as it does on a fixed site”. Therefore, the duties of an employer and the hazards associated with driving for work still need to be managed. So, what are the hazards to consider for your risk assessment? Fatigue and distraction, vehicle condition, vehicle ownership, roadworks, traffic and congestion, time pressures, the weather and the behaviour of other road users. It is also important to remember that we should also consider if a driver is lone working, is vulnerable and that they have access to suitable welfare facilities.

If we look at one of the hazards above for example, vehicle ownership. This hazard can be difficult to manage if the car is not owned by the employer and therefore not in their control. This would be classed as a grey fleet vehicle and comes with a greater risk profile. A grey fleet vehicle is any vehicle used for work purposes. It is estimated that there are around 14 million grey fleet vehicles on the roads, each of which holds hidden risks for an employer.

Employers must ensure that a driver is fit to drive, they hold a valid driving licence and business use insurance, that the vehicle is suitable with up-to-date tax and MOT, and that employers have processes in place to monitor and support high mileage drivers. Collisions are reported to the employer and drivers must drive in accordance to the companies driving policy. It is important to remember that all of these requirements are not just carried out when an employee starts with a company. They must be managed over the duration of the time that an employee is employed by the company.

An employee can hold a clean driving licence at the start of their employment, but this can easily change in a short period of time, where they can incur driving offences or even disqualification. Carrying out regular driving licence checks is vital to managing this risk. 1 in every 431 driving licence holders are disqualified from driving due to accumulation of 12 points or more in the totting up system or for the conviction of a driving offence.

The most effective way to ensure all employees who drive for work understand the importance of carrying this out safely is to provide them with a robust Driving on Company Business procedure. This procedure should determine the maximum permitted journey times, breaks to be taken during journeys, what to do in an accident or a breakdown and the training that should be undertaken.

We must ask ourselves how confident are you, as an employer, that all of your employees using their own cars for driving for work meet these requirements? Are these checks managed and carried out on a regular basis? If the answer is yes, then that is one hidden risk to driving for work that you can be confident is being managed well.

Written by: Sophie Payne