Decade of Action for Road Safety by the United Nations
By Elaine Cohen
Road accidents are the cause of 1.3 million deaths per year. Many of these are work-related By not proactively managing road safety, are CSR managers complicit in 1.3 million deaths per year and 50 million road injuries across the globe?
The 2011-2020 decade has been declared the Decade of Action for Road Safety by the United Nations. The UN Secretary-General launched the decade on May 11, 2011 with the words: "Together, we can save millions of lives." Indeed, the World Health Organization's Global Status Report on Road Safety is quite an alarming document. Well over 1 million people are killed on the world's roads every year, half of these being pedestrians and motorcyclists. As many as 50 million are people per year are injured in road traffic accidents, many sustaining severe permanent disabilities, loss of mobility and often loss of workability.
The costs of road safety issues are a burden on global economies, estimated at over $500 billion per year, and, at an individual level, may be crippling to lower-income families where the main wage-earner may suddenly be rendered unable to work and support the family, or worse, never return home. In addition, the burden on company costs for loss of employees who may need to be replaced, absence from work, vehicle insurance and high administrative costs – not to mention loss of sales or delays to projects, are significant. Somewhere in the data is a proportion of road traffic accidents, deaths and pedestrian injuries that are caused in the name of work: traveling to, from or during work, or simply being around while someone is traveling to or from work. Road safety problems have a high price tag in terms of the lives of people, quality of life for families and communities, and the continuity of business and robustness of global economies.
Many industries are are inevitable stakeholders of road safety management: vehicle manufacturers, including their entire supply chains for parts, accessories and fitments, which design, manufacture and equip vehicles with different safety mechanisms, being sure to add new sophisticated safety solutions to compensate for potential driver error; logistics and transportation companies, which employ drivers who spend hour after hour on the world's roads; public transportation companies – bus drivers, workplace shuttle services, taxi drivers and limousine services; emergency and public utility services of all kinds; all businesses with on-the-ground technical teams, sales forces or professional representatives, which may number thousands of drivers on the road for many hours—pharma, home security, telecoms, technical appliance repairs, etc.; any company that provides employees with a company car as part of their compensation package; and finally, any company that employs people who come to work via driving, cycling, walking.
The fact of the matter is road safety issues affect just about anyone who works and many who doesn’t. Of the 97 people who die or are injured every single minute of every single day around the world because of a road accident, the large majority may have become victims because of something connected to work.
Complicity is an interesting concept. Generally, it refers to being associated in some way with wrongdoing or crime. However, in the broader sense of human rights, the United Nations Global Compact defines several aspects of complicity including "silent complicity," which is "when the company is silent or inactive in the face of systematic or continuous human rights abuse." Substitute CSR manager and road traffic deaths and injuries and you get: silent complicity when the CSR manager is silent or inactive in the face of systematic or continuous road traffic deaths and injuries. In other words, by not proactively creating a framework for embedding a culture and practice of road safety, the CSR manager is silently complicit in anything up to 50 million or more individual tragedies every year and the implications for corporate performance and general socio-economic health of society. The UN claims: "There is substantial evidence confirming that road traffic injuries can be prevented." The CSR manager must understand the risks and benefits of proactively managing road safety as an integral part of the CSR mandate.
This would involve several steps the CSR manager must ensure are implemented by relevant trained personnel:
- Analyzing road safety practices and risks and developing appropriate safeguards;
- Training, training and more training;
- Establishing penalties and rewards for driver behaviors;
- Safe management of vehicles, maintenance, driving routes and driving practices;
- Driver health-checks, a special focus on issues such as drinking and driving, winter driving, young drivers and more.
Additionally, the CSR manager should monitor and measure road safety performance and publicly report results as part of the company's sustainability reporting platform. Aside from vehicle manufacturers and logistics companies, road safety is almost never listed in a materiality matrix or offered as an example of good CSR practice.
Clearly, the CSR manager cannot be personally responsible for the individual behavior of every company driver. Even in the best of safety cultures, some people do not observe the rules. Nonetheless, because road accidents are off-site, I suspect they are also often off the CSR radar. The drive by the UN to advance awareness for road safety issues is a welcome step and may result in greater regulation of accident-related factors such as speed limits, use of seatbelts and helmets, drinking and driving, roadside cameras, competence testing, driver age, driver health and even texting while driving or telematics solutions. This may go some way to resolving issues, but does not absolve CSR managers of a responsibility to take action. In doing so CSR managers around the world can, in the words of the Secretary-General in this Decade of Action for Road Safety, together, save millions of lives.
About Elaine Cohen
Elaine Cohen is a Sustainability Consultant and Reporter at Beyond Business and blogger on sustainability reporting and author of CSR for HR: A necessary business partnership to advance responsible business practices.
Nota del Observatorio SEGVIAL BOYACÁ: Este texto nos llegó por gentil colaboración de la Dra. Nohora Cascante a quien agradecemos sinceramente..
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