Yesterday an average of five people will have been killed on UK roads. This is alongside the five people killed on the roads today and those five who will be killed tomorrow. Tragically, it won’t matter when you read this article, this opening line will be valid at any point in time – the number of people killed on UK roads has hardly changed since 2012.

Those of us in the know are all too aware of this. But why is it only a select few who have this knowledge. Why do more people not know (or possibly not even care) – particularly those employed in logistics and transport. Another relevant statistic is that 25-30% of the 1,793 people who died on the roads in 2017 were at work. That’s somewhere between 448 and 538 work-related deaths in one year. More than three times the 144 people killed in workplace accidents over the same period.

That means we should apply three times the amount of time, resource and importance to road safety than we do workplace safety – but do we?

If the moral case isn’t sufficiently convincing, let’s have a look the financial. Ask yourself a few questions:

• How many workplace accidents were your staff involved in last year?
• How many road traffic collisions were your staff involved in last year?
• What were your financial losses across each – both insured and non-insured?
• What is your balance of time, resource and importance to addressing these incidents and is this proportionate?

Workplace accidents and work-related traffic collisions are regulated, investigated and enforced in completely different ways. Incidentally, the HSE argues that a work-related death on the road is not their remit. It’s only down to the dedication of road safety professionals who help patch over this massive crack, but often their status and influence in the workplace all too often does not reach that of the health and safety professional. The level of HSE scrutiny contributes to a disparity in top level commitment and the good use of management time.

Driving on the public highway – whether in a car, van, truck or bus – is the single most hazardous activity at work. In the absence of HSE concern, good businesses manage this risk well. They learn from the bad decisions their drivers make and implement solutions to prevent recurrence.

A starting point, for ensuring work-related road safety is taken as seriously as workplace safety, is to ensure the people who manage this risk are appropriately trained. Check out the FORS Road Risk Champion and Collision Investigator training courses, eLearning modules and supporting toolkit. As a profession, let’s take the lead and demonstrate how the risks on the roads should be managed.