The 28th of April was the International Day of Mourning remembering and commemorating those who have lost their lives to work-related incidents or illness.

Safework Australia’s October 2021 analysis of the work-related fatalities (from 2020) highlights that nationally there were 194 workplace fatalities, with Queensland having 34 of these.

However, it is the mechanism of these fatalities that is concerning, with the analysis revealing that nationally, 80 (41%) were attributed to vehicle collision, inclusive of cars and trucks, but also machines such as aircraft, boats, loaders, tractors and quad bikes.

Based on this data, it is the machinery operators, drivers, and trades workers that were most at risk with 93 (almost half) of the fatalities occurring within these more ‘mobile’ roles.

Looking at the Safework Australia data again, motor vehicle collisions only account for 2% of the serious injury claims nationally – but in total this is over 2000 incidents.

If we extrapolated this down into an old fashioned Heinrich / Bird’s Safety Pyramid there would have to be a considerable number of near miss / near hit events occurring that we could learn from … but the first question would be ‘Are these getting reported’ to enable the learnings?

With the national incident data in mind, perhaps we should be taking a second look at how we are managing the often-overlooked risks relating to vehicle transport. Reviewing this risk from a different perspective could be beneficial:

  • Where are our driving-related risks?
  • What controls do we have in place to mitigate the causal factors that relate to the vehicles?
  • What controls do we have in place to mitigate the causal factors that relate to the driver / operator?
  • What controls do we have in place to target the causal factors that are caused by others and the road environment?
  • How are these controls applied when it relates to personal vehicles that are used for work purposes?
  • How reliably are these controls implemented across all of the staff?
  • How effective are our on-site vehicle management plans and traffic management plans in protecting pedestrians from vehicle collisions?
  • What can be learned if we were to apply some of the Heavy Vehicle ‘Chain of Responsibility’ requirements – such as fatigue management, vehicle maintenance or speed mitigation – to our normal driving?

Perhaps this year’s International Day of Mourning may provide your organisation with the impetus to examine your own incident statistics related to vehicles and mobile operations. The above figures and dot points may assist with this review of your risks and risk controls for this potentially fatal activity.

Please contact QRMC for information or assistance.