The Government has set challenging targets for reducing road fatalities by 2010 and research evidence has suggested that up to one-third of current road traffic accidents involve people at work. Encouragingly, unlike private road users, occupational drivers work within organisational structures which may be able to help deliver improvements. There are also clear commercial benefits for organisations to adopt driver safety management systems, such as financial benefits linked to reduced accident rates and fulfilling legislative duty of care responsibilities. In order to explore some of the potential organisational mechanisms through which road risk may be managed, BOMEL Ltd was commissioned by the Department for Transport (DfT) to identify whether there is a relationship between an organisation’s safety culture and the attitudes of its drivers to safe driving behaviour and company accident liability. This has increased understanding of the elements of safety culture that have the greatest influence on driver attitudes and has led to practical recommendations as to how safety culture could be improved in order to help reduce occupational road risk. The current study was designed to investigate the relationship between organisational safety culture, worker driver attitudes and accident liability (risk), with the aim of focusing on the potential benefits of organisational safety culture improvements. Seven companies participated in the survey, all of which varied in business type, size and vehicle fleet. The sample consisted of company car drivers (low and high mileage) and HGV drivers, a significant proportion of which were from the small haulage sector, in order to provide a representative cross-section of working drivers. The research involved three main phases: 1) measurement of organisational safety culture; 2) measurement of driver attitudes; and 3) collection of company and accident data. Organisational safety culture was measured using the Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE’s) Health and Safety Climate Tool (HSCST), chosen after considerable review of the available measurement tools. To gain a greater understanding of the additional influences on company drivers once they leave the confines of the organisation and its inherent safety culture, drivers were also interviewed. The interviews were semi-structured in nature and addressed the contribution of individual factors (e.g. age, driving experience), attitudes to company driving rules and procedures, attitudes to specific driving violations, pressure and fatigue, and organisational driving safety management (including individual accident involvement, training, incident reporting and feedback). The companies were also asked to provide available accident and company data. (Author/publisher)
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