DT today
Firms to be liable for company car safety
Firms which fail to ensure staff drive safely in company cars could be prosecuted as part of a police campaign to reduce the number of fatal accidents.
In the last year there were more than 1,000 crashes resulting in deaths which involved work vehicles and companies have been found to ignore employee's welfare on the road.
Police will carry out checks to make sure firm have carried out basic procedures such as ensuring staff are properly insured, have an MoT test for their vehicles and have a valid driving license.
They will also check that managers are not making excessive demands on employees by forcing them to drive when tired.
The new laws will come into force from April next year as part of the Corporate Manslaughter Act which means firms could end up in court by causing death by negligence.
The move comes as recent research by the Health and Safety Executive shows that 20 people are killed and 250 are seriously injured in crashes involving people who were driving for work duties.
More than half of companies fail to check that employees using their own cars for work have insured them for business use, according to a survey by Arval, a fleet management company.
The report stated: "Just over a quarter ask staff to produce an MoT certificate while 17 per cent check to make sure that cars used for work-related purposes have been maintained regularly. "
The Metropolitan Police is one of several forces who are seriously investigating the safety of driving in company cars.
Superintendent Mark Bird, from the Metropolitan Police's Traffic Unit said: "More and more we carry out follow-up investigations with companies after collision to ensure that work-related road safety is embedded within company policy.
"In the event of a collision or injury, police take seriously all the reasons that have led to it happening including the condition of the vehicle and why the driver was on the road, including if they were travelling for business reasons.
"Just as employees would make sure that employees are safe in the workplace, so they should while they are on the road.
"Businesses must face up top the fact that they are responsible for employees' welfare when on the road for business purposes, whether they are driving a company car or not."
Companies that required staff to drive during long working days could be held liable if they were involved in accidents, according to a report issued last week by the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport.
The report stated: " Moving management culture away from an alarming emphasis on quickness and towards an understanding of the car journey as work is a fundamental step in improving road safety for workers."
Up to 300 people are killed each year as a result of drivers falling asleep at the wheel, according to figures from the Department of Transport.
Almost 40 per cent of crashes related to tiredness involve somebody driving for work and up to one third of company vehicles are involved in some sort of collision each year.
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This will surely have quite a big impact for both road warriors and the odd trip on company business.
Quite an admin nightmare tracking non company cars!
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One thing that used to surprise me was how firms would ask you to produce your driving licence when you attended an interview for a driving job, but would never check it again however long you worked for them. I know of one person who got a one year ban for D&D, kept quiet about it and carried on driving his employers van during the whole of that period. For twelve months he was probably the only van driver in the country who never broke the speed limit and used his indicators everytime.
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Via our lease company, our licenses are now checked periodically by another company directly with the DVLA. The company doing the checks is Hudson Kapel and this time we had to sign a form giving them permission to access our DVLA records - or you didn't get a company vehicle.
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To take this a stage further the Transport Manager of one of our divisions is being prosecuted (personally) and is facing three points and a fine for being unable to name the driver of a company vehicle!
In the past they used to prosecute the company.
He is not happy.
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Someone at a company has always been the one to take points as far as I was aware in this situation, e.g. company secretary. Often someone who didn't drive ;-)
There has to be something in law to force companies to track who was driving or we'd all be driving erratically and too fast knowing we could hide behind the company.
I knew someone working for a division of GE. A pool car had been snapped by a safety camera but no record of who had it.... the director got the points... taking him to 12 and a ban.
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We've been told that since we opted out of the Lease scheme we are likely in the near future to have to provide evidence of servicing and MoT when applicable.
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To be honest, I've thought that this has been coming for a long time. I drive many hours on company business, in a private car, but at each end of the working day not during it - i.e. I have do a full day at work as well, I just have a longer commute than most.
I can be sent to any customer, anywhere in the country, and have to do a full days work, and then drive to the next one for an overnight stay, or drive home. Getting home at 9pm or later, after leaving the house at 6.30am is quite common.
Next week, in addition to a full 5 days at work I will drive about 950 miles. On Thursday in particular, I'll not get home until around 11pm. Total working and driving time will be around 60 hours.
I stay out overnight quite a lot these days - in the early days in the job I used to stay out very very rarely, mainly because SWMBO did not like it. Quite honestly, I used to do some ridiculous journeys, such as North of England to Cornwall and back in a day, then back the following day.
What changed all that was the guy from Hull who caused the Selby train crash. He got a lot of bad press because of WHY he was tired (eg. up all night 'talking' to some woman on t'internet). However, the fact remains that, for whatever reason, HE WAS TIRED, and there but for the grace of God go I and thousands of others on a daily basis. I asked SWMBO if she would have thought that I deserved the be pilloried and jailed if I caused the accident, and that honest appraisal by both of us changed the way I worked.
However, as can be seen above, I still do large miles, even with the overnight stays.
It's always struck me as somewhat of a oddity, or worse, that truck drivers can do only x hours of driving a day (not sure of exact figure), with properly timed breaks, and all strictly controlled with Tachos, whilst I am allowed, quite legally, to drive from one end of the country to the other and back in a day, with a shift in between.
When this change comes in I think it may seriously affect the way in which we work and impact quite seriously on my cost effectiveness for the company, which is a small company. However, I think it has to be done and will welcome the change.
I suppose I could insist that, after working at the opposite end of the country, I need the following day to be given over to driving home, rather than doing another day's chargeable work, but in a competitive world, and with a mortgage to pay, taking such a stance is difficult. There would always be someone else willing to take my place and we are all just a number at the end of the day, no matter how important to the company we think we are.
I could also get anothe job perhaps, but I do like driving, and enjoy the work I do in between driving. And I get a reasonable salary for doing it. I just wish it did not involve quite so much of my life.
And by the way, I've never been asked for proof of driving license, MOT's, Insurance, servicing or road worthines of car. I know of one or two who, when we all dropped out of the company car scheme and took the money, decided to use the cash as a useful salary increase and drove an utter shed.
Interesting times ahead :)
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>>Interesting times ahead :)
Indeed.
I wonder if the future will also take into consideration commuting time from home to base before any work miles.
I had a contractor working with me who commuted daily from Bath to the Heathrow area. ( with his base at Camberly ) The company I worked for had some staff commuting daily from London to Swindon for two/three years .
My brother used to do regular long trips and work long days outside on site in a highly critical safety related role. I told him he was insane doing it, especially in a small van.
The company kept the pressure on but sadly big C arrived before his retirement.
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These sort of measures are all very well but, as usual, a great deal of expence/inconvenience will fall on 'the generally law-abiding' motorists.
How much more efficient it would be if, as a start, the authorities seriously chased the persistently untaxed/unlicenced/un-MOT'd brigade.
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Police and H&S people have been talking about cracking down on this for years, but there seems to be no appetite to do anything about it.
One of the driver training firms recently said that 20% of the people firms sent on driver training courses in their own cars were unable to produce acceptable licence or insurance details.
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not before time IMO......Mile Muncher's post must be relevant to many people..and it really should not be the case
the ironic thing is, if you get a good night's sleep and are refreshed, you'll perform better and therefore do your job better, so it's short sighted allowing your staff to do constant excessive hours
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The working time regs insist on 11 hours uninterrupted rest between shifts. I don't know whether this includes or excludes travelling time as excluding travelling time would mean mile munchers' firm is breaking the law anyway. The 48 hour max working week might also be being broken.
teabelly
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Going back to my earlier point on licences, I occassionally do a delivery job for a local shop when the regular driver is on holiday or sick. I use their vehicle and neither the present owner of the business or the previous one has ever asked to see my licence. I don't recall the latter even asking me if I had one, he just assumed it as he knew I drove.
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Mile-muncher, are you my other half in disguise?
Take this week for example - on Tuesday he did his 1.5hr commute, did a full day at work and then drove to Scotland. Then he did two long days work in Scotland, drove home Thursday night and was back at the office early the following morning. I haven't seen him yet this weekend as he's spent the whole day in bed asleep.
>The working time regs insist on 11 hours uninterrupted rest between shifts.
I've never known this to be applied anywhere outside the public sector. I'm afraid the vast majority of people work in the real world. I don't, and I know I'm very lucky in that respect to be so well looked after.
Legislation for company car drivers cannot come soon enough, in my opinon, but I very much doubt it ever will, and that it will be paid attention to even if it is brought in.
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>The working time regs insist on 11 hours uninterrupted rest between shifts. I've never known this to be applied anywhere outside the public sector. I'm afraid the vast majority of people work in the real world. I don't and I know I'm very lucky in that respect to be so well looked after.
My daughter is a Health Care Worker (in the NHS) and she *frequently* does a late shift, finishing in theory at 10PM (but often later) and is back in work at 7.45AM next morning. With travelling time etc the max she'll be in bed is 6.5hrs and if there have been major incidents during the shift she'll struggle to get off to sleep.
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There is a legal problem here and in other posts. Current H&S rules put an obligation on an employer to ensure that everyone works in a safe environment, that includes travelling on business.
In addition part of the working time directive, part that you cannot opt out of, insists on an 11 hour gap between working days. That excludes normal commuting, but not business travel, although the border is not clear. You also have to have 'weekends'
As to compliance - my employer - I admit a very good, very large one - is already concerned. This follows an 'incident' when an employee was hospitalised following 12 straight days of work. The middle weekend involved only three hours work on each day, but HR were rushing around for a few days.
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Mile-muncher are you my other half in disguise?
:)
Reassuring to know that it is not just me that has no life then.
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>>The 48 hour max working week might also be being broken.
The 48 hour rule is a joke,an employeer can ask you to sign a disclaimer to opt out of this rule.If you do you no longer need a time sheet.But if you dont sign the opt out you are supposed to fill in a time sheet to prove that you have not exceeded the 48 hours.So you could opt out and do all the hours god gave and there is no record of it.Also companies would rather you opted out as I have often been encouraged to do if you get my drift.
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rustbucket (the original)
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I work for a large insurer and fortunately they take these things (and any other H&S issues) seriously.
Using your own car on company business is not encouraged and hire cars are recommended. We sign (online) a declaration to confirm that our own cars are roadworthy etc. and we are covered under the Company's own insurance whilst on company business.
I think any employee who felt they were being asked to drive for too many hours would get a sympethic hearing and our union would be very supportive if any 'action' were taken against the employee.
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