THE ROAD™
Employers: Health & Safety and Advanced
Motorcycle Assessment and Training
This page looks at the
legal duties faced by employers who
have people working for them who are riding motorcycles as part of their
job. It
emphasises how the provision of advanced motorcycle assessment and training
can go a large way towards fulfilling those legal duties. It will enable
employers to manage the occupational road risks faced by those at work.
Properly trained riders are a reduced risk.
For
people who ride for a living, their “place of work” for
Health & Safety purposes is on the
road.
RoSPA estimates that every year in
the UK 1,000 people are killed in road collisions while driving on company
business; three times as many as die in what has traditionally been
termed, “the workplace”.
A motorist in a car covering 25,000 miles a year on
business faces an equivalent risk at work to that of an underground coal
miner. Since the risk to motorcyclists is about 40
times higher than for those in a car, and since many delivery and courier
motorcyclists ride many more miles per year than that, the risk is close to
being intolerable. It certainly represents a major safety concern.
The use of a company motorcycle or the
employment of motorcyclists using their own machines on your business
represents a hazardous risk that needs to be properly managed.
Employers
need to adopt policies, training practices and monitor performance so that
riders’ technique reflects best safe practice. They are responsible under Health & Safety and/or
Civil Law for the care of the people riding motorcycles on their business.
This responsibility cannot be off-loaded onto the riders to whom
employers have either an explicit or, at the very least, an implied
duty of care.
The
Management
of Health & Safety at Work Regulations 1999 requires employers to
assess all risks
to their employees and
provide adequate training.
If
you care for the
people who do your business day-to-day, you will provide for their safety by
ensuring they
have access to the best training available.
Checking
that a rider holds a valid driving licence is not sufficient. The
regulations say that employers must take into account the
capability of the employee when
undertaking risk assessment.
If you know that the riding you expect of those who work for you
requires a level of skill greater than that expected just to pass the
driving test, it would be remiss not to ensure that standard could be
achieved. Similarly, there are riders looking for jobs who may not
have ridden for some time since passing their test or who may not be
experienced on larger machines or in city or motorway traffic.
By
having your riders undertake advanced motorcycle assessment and training,
they will be trained in riding in a safe, systematic manner that lets them
deal with any hazard that they encounter.
The likelihood of them being involved in a collision while at work will be
considerably reduced. Therefore, the potential trouble faced from damage,
injuries, loss of work time, loss of schedule and delivery time etc. are
also reduced.
Get them assessed and, if
necessary, offer training!
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