That was the message from John Davidge, head of fleet technical at Cardinus Risk Management, at last week’s ACFO spring national seminar entitled ‘A Van for all Reasons’.
At the seminar, held Thursday 5 May at the De Vere Harben, Newport Pagnell, the former Kent roads policing officer told seminar delegates that van drivers should be encouraged “to do the right thing” and that started with collision investigation from the outset of an incident and an analysis of the reasons why it occurred.
At the event, he highlighted that most incidents were reversing and manoeuvering-related and said: “Drivers need to know what they have to do to stop those sort of collisions.”
Risks must be minimised as far as possible by drivers being encouraged to, for example, reverse park, while poor observation was one of the most significant contributory factors in a crash.
Davidge also urged all businesses to implement a safety culture and added: “Many van drivers are inexperienced at driving such vehicles and a lot of that is due to a poor culture on behalf of them and often the company. There are a lot of businesses that don’t have a safety culture.
“However, a vehicle is set up the most fallible component is the human being inside. There is no magic safety silver bullet. It is a jigsaw of protection with no shortcuts.”
