The Project EDWARD Week of Action 2022 takes place 17-21 October. Simon Turner, campaigns manager, Driving for Better Business, explains what you and your drivers need to know.

Simon Turner, campaigns manager, Driving for Better Business

Now in its seventh year, Project EDWARD (Every Day Without A Road Death) is the UK’s biggest platform for showcasing best practice in road safety. It is backed by government, the emergency services, highways agencies, road safety organisations and British businesses. It promotes an evidence-led, ‘safe system’ approach – the long-term objective of which is a road traffic system free from death and serious injury.

Driving for Better Business (DfBB) has supported Project EDWARD from the beginning and was very proud to be associated with it when the campaign won a Prince Michael International Road Safety Award in 2018 – an award that DfBB itself won in 2021. With those who drive for work making up such a large part of the population – and the fact that commercial drivers and private drivers share the roads together – we’ve always seen Project EDWARD as an important national initiative and worked hard to ensure that its objectives and messages stay relevant to fleet operators and business drivers.

Some of the challenges being covered will include a look at the often unrecognised but substantial problem of drug driving among commercial vehicle drivers, the growing cohort of older drivers as many stay in the workplace for longer and impact of technology on collision reduction, police enforcement and post-crash care.

Police forces across the country are increasingly working alongside other agencies on initiatives that are identifying large numbers of non-compliant business drivers and commercial vehicles. Often these specifically target poorly maintained vans, unsafe loading and drivers hours offences. The average fine per offence is almost £1,000 so it doesn’t take long for van drivers and owners to figure out that vans which don’t comply with the rules, regulations, standards and procedures can be a costly experience in fines, let alone additional costs for recovery and repair.

An action-packed week

Some of these activities will be featured during the Project EDWARD week of action (17-21 October) but DfBB is also now working with local authorities, police forces and road safety partnerships to help them engage local businesses through a regional Driving for Better Business programme. This includes making employers aware of just how easy it is to get caught up in these events, which happen all year round and could mean severe business disruption if your vehicle gets stopped and isn’t allowed to continue due to overloading, safety-critical mechanical faults or even an incorrectly licensed driver.

Here’s what to look out for during the week of action:

Road Trip: Kia has kindly lent Project EDWARD three EV6 GT-Line S models with long-range quick charging batteries for our national road trip visiting examples of good practice in road risk management. They are all finished in Runway Red and decked out in full Project EDWARD livery. Keep an eye out for them on your travels.

National Safe Speed Day: roads policing units across the country will be out in force in a coordinated programme of speed enforcement on Wednesday 19th October. Make sure your drivers know about it!

Compliance events: roadside compliance checks will be operating across the country focusing on commercial vehicles, and the National Highways ‘Operation Tramline’ cabs will be patrolling the motorways – these are unmarked HGV cabs fitted with multiple cameras to record driving offences and work in tandem with marked police cars and motorbikes.

Daily broadcasts: highlights from each day on the road trip, along with other informative segments, will be broadcast as part of a 40-minute programme streamed on social media each evening at 7pm. Look out for segments featuring expertise and insight from our longstanding road risk management partners Webfleet, D.tec International and Drivetech.

For more details on how to get involved, and to see events, activity and resources, check out the Project EDWARD website or #ProjectEDWARD on social media.