OH&S
On the road to driver safety by Gavin Altus, Managing Director, Sentrient As families around the country begin to navigate school drop-offs and pickups for another year, employers may be surprised to learn that they have a vested interest in ensuring compliance with the states’ and territories’ various road traffic laws and regulations. The federal government released its national road safety strategy over Christmas to some criticism, while the Victorian government has put forward a proposal to reduce the speed limit on rural and regional roads where upgrades are not possible. While these discussions take place and ministers prevaricate, it is incumbent on all of us to maintain a safe road system. These statistics from the World Health Organization should illustrate why it’s so important to do this. • Approximately 1.35 million people die each year as a result of road traffic crashes • Between 20 and 50 million more people suffer non-fatal injuries, with many incurring a disability as a result of their injury • More than half of all road traffic deaths are among vulnerable road users: pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists. • Road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death for children and young adults aged 5-29 years • 93 per cent of the world's fatalities on the roads occur in low- and middle-income countries, even though these countries have approximately 60 per cent of the world's vehicles.
46 Highway Engineering Australia | Jan/Feb 2022
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Road traffic crashes cost most countries three per cent of their gross domestic product. Employers are legally obligated to maintain healthy workplaces and the legislation that mandates this stipulates that this obligation extends outside the physical site that constitutes the workplace. An employer must have safe driving policies in place and also provide education to support it and these must be regularly delivered to staff to include: • Understanding the importance of safe driving • Being aware of the main causes of accidents and how to avoid them • Practising safe driving before, during and after driving • Understanding safe driving responsibilities of individuals and employers • Knowing what to do in the event of an accident. • Recognising that we all have a role to play in keeping ourselves and others safe. These education programs are particularly pertinent during our current supply chain crisis – with truck and van drivers as thin on the ground as they are because of the Omicron wave and isolation requirements, just one collision because of poor decisionmaking while driving poses a threat to any number of consignments making it to where they need to be. That’s besides the usual nightmares that come up after an accident – the hassles with insurance, the hospital visits, or worse.
Gavin Altus, Managing Director, Sentrient
If you could decrease the probability of that happening to your staff by asking them to sit behind a computer for a few hours and completing a few modules, why wouldn’t you?
ABOUT SENTRIENT Sentrient is an Australian workplace compliance company, with our head office in Melbourne. We help small and medium businesses and larger organisations take the pain out of workplace compliance and to create safer, fairer and better workplaces. We help businesses across Australia to meet their legal obligations for workplace relations and safety matters such as work health and safety (WHS), privacy, code of conduct, workplace bullying, sexual harassment, equal employment opportunity (EEO) and appropriate use of internet and social media. For further information, please visit: https://www.sentrient.com.au/
