ABOUT BRAKE

  Brake is a national road safety charity which, among other divisions, has a division, called BrakeCare, which provides national support services for road crash victims and a division called the Fleet Safety Forum, which provides risk management advice to fleet managers in companies.

  Brake welcomes the opportunity it has been given to respond to this consultation. Brake has campaigned over the past decade for tougher penalties for companies who break safety laws that result in death and injury on the road.

  This consultation response is prepared by Mary Williams OBE, chief executive of Brake. She has sat on a number of relevant committees, including the Health and Safety Executive's committee the Work Related Road Safety Task Group, which looked at management responsibilities for health and safety while on the road.

OUR RESPONSE

  Brake welcomes this bill, particularly in light of appalling tragedies that have cost numerous lives on our roads and been directly caused by management failure, but have not resulted in justice against that management.

  A case in point is the Sowerby Bridge disaster in 1993, which resulted in the deaths of six people. In this crash, a truck with no working brakes went out of control on a steep hill in West Yorkshire. The only successful charge against the company was a failure to maintain the brakes, resulting in a fine of just £5,000.

  Particular points that Brake welcomes in the bill:

  1.  The scrapping of the need to find a directing mind.

  2.  The ability to inflict an unlimited fine on a company.

  3.  The ability to also continue to prosecute individuals for offences under other existing laws—this means, for example, that a director of a haulage company who is found to have asked his drivers to break tachograph regulations, and one of his tired drivers subsequently killed, could be charged with aiding and abetting death by dangerous driving and sentenced to a maximum of 14 years.

  4.  The inclusion of "wilful blindness" in the definition of gross negligence, which is vital in order to successfully prosecute companies who simply claim they had no idea of levels of risk.

  As a word of caution, Brake also points out the following:

  1.  The new law will have to be accompanied with instruction to prosecutors to actively pursue charges such as aiding and abetting causing death by dangerous driving when a directing mind can be identified, rather than go for the "softer option" of the corporate manslaughter charge, which may be easier to convict upon, but which only results in a fine for a company, not custody for an individual.

  2.  The unlimited fines should be significant enough to put companies out of business if they have been proven to have killed through their wilful actions—only then will the fine be a deterrent of any worth, rather than just another insurance liability.

  3.  Aside from the unlimited fine, the bill does not prevent convicted companies from continuing in operation. While a bus or truck company is highly likely to have its operator's licence revoked as a result of such a conviction, there is no requirement for an operator of a fleet of cars or vans to hold such a licence. There are many such operators in the UK. The Home Office needs to address this issue to prevent the new charge simply being viewed by managers, as stated above in 2, as just another insurance liability. Possible solutions could include an agreement with the motor insurance industry not to grant fleet motor insurance to companies that have been convicted of this new charge.

  4.  The proceeds from fines should be directed towards a Victim's Fund, to fund services such as Brake's road crash victim support work. At present, the only victim support services funded by central Government are those of the charity Victim Support, which is only contracted to support victims of crime, which excludes victims of road crashes and industrial accidents, for example. This is deeply unfair to these victims who have been bereaved violently and suddenly and who are very much in need of support, but often receive none due to lack of funding.

  5.  Brake would like to draw the attention of the Home Office to a current review by the Health and Safety Executive on the possible inclusion of road crashes in RIDDOR, the system for recording injuries at work. At present, there is no requirement for companies to record at work road crashes, nor a legal requirement for them to do risk audits on their at work road risk. It would be pertinent for the Home Office to respond to this current consultation by the HSE supporting clause 4 which relates to requiring companies to record road crash data.