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The Health and Safety Executive has announced plans to remove 4000 dodgy ladders from Britain's workplaces via a 'ladder exchange'. That set me thinking...
The Health and Safety Executive has announced plans to remove 4000 dodgy ladders from Britain's workplaces via a 'ladder exchange'. That set me thinking.
Almost every day one sees people driving vehicles for which the word 'dodgy' is altogether an understatement. Ancient horse boxes held together with fence wire and baling twine seem to be particularly prevalent in the category of 'dodgy bordering on downright dangerous'.
The job of catching such unsafe vehicles before they kill someone falls to the Department of Transport, through its Vehicle and Operator Services Agency. They're the ones who pull in trucks for roadside checks.
It's just one of the DfT's myriad responsibilities, another of which is actively promoting at-work road safety for all road users including business car and van drivers. That job used to belong to the HSE but they managed to pass it across to Transport a year or so ago - to free up resources for other campaigns, such as working at height.
That's where the ladder exchange comes in. The HSE admits that the intention isn't so much to eradicate all the UK's suspect stepladders but rather to highlight to small businesses the dangers of falls.
Falls kill some 50 workers in the UK each year, and injure 300. Of course that's a problem that needs to be addressed. But, by the HSE's own estimates, at-work road crashes kill 20 times more people and injure 40 times as many as falls do.
Isn't it a bit odd that the Government agency responsible for all safety in the workplace was allowed effectively to walk away from promoting good practice and awareness in what is now, perhaps the most dangerous non-military occupational activity there is - driving?
As a result, we see the fleet industry and larger fleets now making nearly all the running on at-work road safety more or less by themselves. The DfT, having had the promotional ball dropped in its lap, is still getting it rolling. Meanwhile, research shows time and again that occupational road safety messages are not getting through to small businesses, who run three quarters of all business cars.
You have to question some of Whitehall's priorities.
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