The Government has set challenging targets for reducing road fatalities by 2010 and research evidence has suggested that up to one-third of current road traffic accidents involve people at work. Encouragingly, unlike private road users, occupational drivers work within organizational structures which may be able to help deliver improvements. There are also clear commercial benefits for organizations to adopt driver safety management systems, such as financial benefits linked to reduced accident rates and fulfilling legislative duty of care responsibilities. In order to explore some of the potential organizational mechanisms through which road risk may be managed, BOMEL Ltd was commissioned by the Department for Transport (DfT) to identify whether there is a relationship between an organization’s safety culture and the attitudes of its drivers to safe driving behavior and company accident liability. This has increased understanding of the elements of safety culture that have the greatest influence on driver attitudes and has led to practical recommendations as to how safety culture could be improved in order to help reduce occupational road risk.

The study surveyed seven different companies and made ten recommendations.