Organisational commitment to road safety – how serious are we?

This paper examines the commitments a number of public and private sector organisations have made to road safety initiatives and practices in the United Kingdom (UK). The paper also looks the work of a selection of UK based companies in the undertaking of their global operations. Whether organisations in Australia should be considering similar commitments is then discussed.

The Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) has been involved with a number of the initiatives and practices introduced above, with the aim of extracting further road safety gains through cultural change. These include such initiatives as:

• the creation of innovative key performance indicators for road safety ? rating the actions and contributions of road and safety authorities in other ways than traditional crash and injury statistics;
• the EuroRAP road assessment program ? giving stakeholders performance information on road environment safety across Europe;
• the introduction of journey data recorders (?black boxes?) into a range of vehicle fleets;
• the corporate commitment of large, multi-national companies to depot and on-road safety on key strategic routes;
• the UK Road Death Investigation Manual ? which in very general terms directs more Police resources and emphasis to the investigation of fatal crashes; and
• the legal pursuit of road safety ? such as the application of corporate manslaughter charges to company executives

This paper will present information on trends and specific initiatives within, and emanating from, the UK that could be expected to add value to existing Australian road safety initiatives, but require levels of commitment from a range of different groups to be successsful. The paper then suggests a number of specific items for inclusion in consideration by government authorities, advocacy groups, private industry and community interest groups.