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Telematics provides key to compliance with health and safety

By / 14 years ago / Latest News / No Comments

The company says that following the advent of the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007, which makes directors personally liable for ensuring employees’ safety at work and subject to jail sentences if shown to be negligent – fleets should not be taking unnecesary risks with drivers' safety.

Jeremy Gould, UK country manager for TomTom WORK, said: 'Every employer is required by law to develop Health & Safety (H&S) policies to minimise the risks to health and wellbeing of employees while at work: this is a company’s ‘Duty of Care’ (DoC). In the event of a serious incident at work, the employer is required to produce an audit trail demonstrating its DoC policy minimised the risk to the employee. Without it, prosecution is almost a certainty and that can mean jail time for non-compliant directors.'

He added that whilst companies are used to monitoring health and safety in the workplace, all too often the same rigour is not applied to employees driving on company business.

'What fleet operators can overlook is the working time limits include the hours employees spend behind the wheel of their vehicle getting to and from a job. Additionally, too few can demonstrate to the standard required in a court of law that their employees are expected to obey the speed limits and exhibit appropriate safe driving behaviour,' commented Mr Gould.

However, he said that there is a simple way to help demonstrate compliance – telematics. 'Detailed logs showing who was driving, how long for, how fast and whether they were employing harsh braking or steering inputs are automatically generated. Systems don’t have to be expensive or complicated and when you balance the risk of jeopardising employee safety and going to jail with the costs of investment in telematics (which are quickly repaid) it’s mindboggling that all companies don’t employ the technology across their fleets.'

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