Road Safety Week, which takes place 15th – 21st November.
Road Safety week is Organised by Brake, a national road safety charity, to increase awareness of road safety issues. Sadly, the number of deaths and injuries has not reduced significantly over recent years, apart from during lockdown in 2020.
In 2020, there were 1,460 reported road deaths and although this is a decrease of 17% from 2019, the figure is suspected to be influenced by the impact of Covid on reduced road traffic. As well as the devastation that road traffic accidents brings, it also costs the UK £36 billion per year.
The theme for this year’s Road Safety Week is ‘Road Safety Heroes’, which celebrates road safety professionals who have made a difference to road safety. This prompted us to focus on Sadie Weston, CEO, and founder of Employ, who has pioneered ground-breaking technology that has put people’s safety first.
DRS uses algorithms to fully manage Working Time Directives, EU Drivers’ Hours, Conduct Regulations, Agency Workers Regulations, IR35, and licence criteria with 100% accuracy to ensure a non-compliant driver is never placed on a shift. DRS manages bookings for increased efficiency and selects the best match to client needs via a pool of drivers through software algorithms.
We are proud of being able to share DRS with other agencies and can now be used in a range of industry recruitment agencies. However, in addition to DRS we can happily state that we follow Brake’s recommended list of activity for employers around safety, which is why we have a 100% compliance record:
• Engage staff with key road safety issues and encourage them to commit to making safe and healthy journeys
• Include road safety in corporate social responsibility strategy to show you care about staff, customers and local people
• Introduce robust policies and procedures to manage work-related road risk
• Remind drivers to think about who they share the road with and always drive at speeds appropriate to the road conditions
• Choose routes that use the safest roads and avoid places where people live
• Monitor driver behaviour using telematics systems
• Run targeted training for drivers that show unsafe driving behaviours
• Investigate the cause of all collisions and near-misses. (Brake 2021)
To find out more about Road Safety Week, visit www.roadsafetyweek.org.uk
