Vosa and HSE are targeting the wrong people and the
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wrong crimes AS I READ the latest edition of Vosa's Moving On email, I could hear the tap of the undertaker's hammer putting the last nail in the coffin of UK road haulage.
Vosa and the Health and Safety Executive have concocted impossible and unworkable guidance that will do little for road safety and much to fill the coffers of the government's cash-hungry road transport safety stasi.
The email details how poor load security was responsible for three deaths and 160 serious injuries in 2009/10.
Expressed as a percentage and taking the average figures for 2009 and 2010, that's 0.00147% of road deaths and 0.00703% of serious injuries in the country that, according to the then transport secretary Phillip Hammond in September 2011, had Europe's safest roads.
Compare that with the average number of deaths over the same period where the driver was over the blood alcohol limit: 315. That's 10,500% more deaths caused by alcohol than insecure loads.
The figures tell the real story of an industry that in respect of load security is not inherently unsafe.
Operators do not want lost loads: it costs money, reputation and has implications for the business and its standing with the traffic commissioner — not forgetting that no sane person would want their actions to result in the death or serious injury of an innocent third party.
So by all means Vosa should target those that flout the law and fail to make any attempt to secure their load or indeed those that lose a load because it hasn't been properly secured — but leave decent operators and drivers alone.
Name withheld by request