David Higginbottom FCILT, CEO at Driver First Assist discusses the importance of preventing serious injuries for drivers whilst signifying the consequences of not adopting first-aid practice in the workplace.
The Department for Transport recognises the road network as the most dangerous workplace in the UK. Business driving kills 4 times as many people as other kinds of at-work incidents across the whole of the UK industry. In fact, the Royal Society for the prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) state that over 100 people are killed or seriously injured every week in road traffic collisions (RTCs).
Moreover, the latest statistics published by the Department for Transport reveal 1,608 deaths in 2021, which is the equivalent of the type of aircraft used for short haul holidays, crashing every five weeks! If that happened, we would do something about it, wouldn’t we?
Perhaps even more concerning is that there has been no reduction in RTC fatalities in over a decade, and this has been described as ‘a disgrace’ by the Institute of Advanced Motorists. Historically, while deaths in road traffic collisions fell year-on-year, now Department for Transport data depicts ‘the trend in the number of fatalities has been broadly flat since 2010.’
So, what is being done to reduce the numbers of people killed and seriously injured on our roads each year? A plethora of road safety organisations and road safety initiatives exist for the purpose of reducing the toll of fatalities. But, to put it bluntly, every penny invested in over a decade has achieved little or nothing – the statistics speak for themselves.
Improvements in vehicle design and road construction have delivered significant reductions in fatalities and serious injuries, though the statistics clearly illustrate, the point of diminishing returns in those investments has long passed. Perhaps the introduction of driverless vehicles, with the potential to remove human error, can kickstart a new downward trajectory.
In the meantime, the quest to reduce fatalities remains focused almost exclusively on initiatives dependent on achieving behavioural change, with little evidence to suggest that improvements will be anything other than marginal. Unless and until accident prevention/road safety schemes result in universal improvements in driving standards, it’s reasonable to assume collisions and fatalities will remain at current levels for the foreseeable future?
Even with our best endeavours, ‘accidents will happen’. And, when they do, our response is and should be to ensure the injured receive immediate care. Afterall, it can be the difference between life and death. That’s why we have first aid in the workplace, where an immediate response is a legal requirement and not just a moral obligation.
“Levelling up on the standard of first-aid available to drivers to match provision in a conventional workplace is a big challenge.”
The importance of bystander delivered first-aid is not just best practice, it is evidence based. A 1994 study of pre-hospital deaths from accidental injury by Hussain and Redmond found ‘at least 39% and up to 85% of preventable pre-hospital deaths may be due to airway obstruction’. Death from an obstructed airway occurs within four minutes, well inside the ambulance Category 1 response time of 8 minutes. Hardly surprising that a considerable number of RTC fatalities occur before the arrival of paramedics.
The same study also reported that, ‘The injury severity scores indicated that only a fifth of those who died before reaching hospital had injuries incompatible with life. The death of those who died before reaching hospital was potentially preventable in many cases’. To put that in context, of the 1,608 road fatalities
recorded in 2021, four-fifths (1,286), may have survived long enough to reach hospital had first-aid assistance, routinely available in a conventional workplace, been available at the scene.
Hussein and Redman repeated their research twenty years later and found no improvement in bystander response to medical emergencies. Even though the importance of post-crash response is widely understood, at least within the road safety community, in reality, it doesn’t exist. Which begs the question, why? Afterall, the Health & Safety First-Aid Regulations apply to all workers, including drivers.
Creating a cohort of first aiders for the road network is no easy task and requires significant resources and careful coordination. Unlike a conventional workplace, where first-aid provision is the responsibility of a single employer, creating and managing a cohort of on-road first-aiders requires interaction between multiple employers. This can only be achieved through the operation of a structured organisation, which is why Driver First Assist was created.
Drivers that have undertaken some form of first-aid training provide an important albeit limited resource, but it is not enough to achieve the significant reduction in fatalities that could be achieved with a coordinated response. Furthermore, on-road first-aiders require a broader range of skills to deal with the potentially dangerous environment that a road traffic collision creates; skills that can only be gained by completing the specialist DFA training course.
DFA was created in partnership with the emergency services, the ultimate experts in responding to RTCs. DFA’s training materials were produced by the emergency services, and the training is delivered by emergency services personnel. It is this close association that ensures the content and delivery of training materials is always fit for purpose and innovative. This is because DFA is a structured organisation that these important lines of communication can be maintained, and a high standard of training delivered with consistency.
Levelling up on the standard of first-aid available to drivers to match provision in a conventional workplace is a big challenge, but one that businesses working in partnership with DFA can meet. It requires no major technical breakthrough, just leadership. And the opportunity to significantly reduce RTC fatalities and
serious injuries is of a magnitude that justifies substantial investment. It’s time to act. It’s time to level up!
Download the PDF document here.
