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Accidents can happen
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An average of five UK transport workers a day are hurt through falls from vehicles. Drivers need to be careful. Here are the facts.
Words: Guy Sheppard
How dangerous is working at height in road transport? The fate of driver Nigel Sargeant from Boston in Lincolnshire shows how carrying out routine tasks on trailers can have fatal consequences. A court heard last month that he died from head injuries after falling 15 feet.
Health and Safety Executive (HSE) inspector Jo Anderson says he was trying to reduce the height of a load of metal telegraph poles. -1-le cut the bands around one of the pole packs and the load shifted, causing him to fall."
According to USE figures, the number of workplace transport injuries caused by falling from a vehicle has averaged nearly 1.800 per year since 2001. This covers all reported injuries resulting in more than three days off work. Over the same period, fatalities have averaged nearly four per year.
Who takes the blame for accidents?
Safety legislation focuses mainly on what employers need to do to prevent injuries to their workers. In the Sargeant case, his employer, Saint-Gobain Building Distribution, was fined £120,000 with E51,000 costs for failing to perform a sufficient risk assessment.
But the law states employees are also responsible for their own health and safety while at work, placing a duty on them to co-operate with their employer to ensure safety requirements are met. An employee can be fined up to £5,000 in a magistrates court for not complying with the Health & Safety At Work Act. In a crown court, the fine is unlimited.
While the likelihood of employees being fined by the USE is slim, employers still need to demonstrate that their drivers not only understand the safety requirements, but also follow them.
Disciplinary action
This means disciplinary action may be necessary if employees ignore the requirements.
At Llanelli-based Owens Road Services, drivers working at height are instructed to wear hard hats with a chin strap in place. Commercial and technical manager Oliver Jones says: "We instruct about the hard hat rule at induction. If a driver is reported for not wearing a hat, disciplinary procedures are started."
In the event of a serious injury, drivers' entitlement to compensation could be limited if it was shown they had been negligent about following safety precautions.
What is working at height?
There used to be a principle that any work done at least two metres above ground level was working at height, but this was scrapped in 2005.
"You could be half a metre or 10 metres above the ground, it doesn't matter." explains an HSE spokesman. "You can still sustain an injury or worse."
As a result, there is no minimum height at which Owens Road Services applies its hard hat rule. "We must do everything practicable to prevent the drivers having an accident, but it's easier said than done." says Jones.
What are the main safety precautions?
The main safety recommendations from the HSE include taking time to climb down from a vehicle, using steps and handholds if available, and checking for uneven surfaces such as potholes and kerbs before stepping off the vehicle.
It says jumping down not only increases the risk of falls, but is also bad for knees. Keeping load areas tidy and cleaning up spills of diesel and mud from catwalks and loading areas will also help prevent trips.
Looking
Geoff Smallwood, UK safety, health and environment manager for Shanks Waste Management, says most falls from its 300-strong lorry fleet are caused by drivers not looking where they put their feet. "We estimate that Shanks' drivers get in and out of their cabs around 2.5 million times a year; with that frequency of risk, it's impossible not to have a slip at some time."
Graham Clare, safety training manager at Suffolk-based Turners (Soham), says the problem boils down to complacency among drivers who do the same thing over and over again. By not looking where they're going, drivers often miss steps or land awkwardly on uneven ground.
Shoes Other HSE advice includes wearing slip-resistant footwear and keeping the soles of footwear clean to reduce the risk of slipping. At Shanks, drivers used to wear rigger boots, which gave little ankle support when climbing on and off vehicles. Smallwood says: "We banned them for the majority of our drivers, putting in their place lace-up boots that offered good ankle protection.
Since the change was made eight years ago, the number of work-related injuries, diseases and other incidents reported by Shanks has dropped by a third.
Where do precautions vary?
HSE inspector Scott Mckinnon, who has worked extensively among hauliers in South Wales to prevent falls from height, says different lorries carry different risks. "The HSE is giving advice for as many situations as we can, but we can't provide advice for every one" Wherever possible, he adds, working at height should be avoided if there are other ways of getting a job done. This may mean investing in special equipment to do this.
At Turners (Soham), flow meters have been installed on tankers, so drivers don't have to go on top to check how full they are. Clare says that if drivers do need to go on to a tanker, they should be aware of the weather conditions, ensure access equipment is in a good state of repair and not become distracted by what is happening around them.
Third-party sites
When working in unfamiliar areas. Turners' drivers are instructed to do their own 'my space' risk assessment, focusing on the area they will be working in and thinking through the potential dangers. "If a driver reports a problem on a site. we arrange to visit the site and do risk assessments on everything drivers would do there," says Clare. "We do it in conjunction with the site owners who are very appreciative that we go there."
This underlines the role drivers play in reducing risks for other people as well as themselves. The HSE advises drivers to not only report missing or damaged equipment and any other object that could cause a fall, but to pass on ideas to their safety advisor or supervisor. i*