[Closed] Reported a van driver who was on the phone

I wonder just how many parking spaces they'd lose in a typical car park?

Car parks in America are amazing, I wish the helf and safety peeps would take over and put them like they are over there. I spent a good 5 minutes wriggling out of the little pay and display car park by the rail museum in york on monday, never thought to reverse in. There were about 20 spaces on the plot, a similar sized carpark I parked in in Beverly hills had about 7. All diagonal, just down the one side.

I suppose I must be the old dinosaur in the room, yep, I've read the responses and listened to the mantra put out by the last employer.
Well is was more of a dictator decision actually, it was even a disaplinary issue.......

However, the Grand Prix start at clocking off time was definitely more of a risk, but I"lol except that I am in the minority here.

As I said, I was a qualified risk assessor, and there were much greater risk areas other than parking the car in the car park.

I wonder just how many parking spaces they'd lose in a typical car park?

As I said, I was a qualified risk assessor, and there were much greater risk areas other than parking the car in the car park.

As a risk assessor im sure you also know that you dont not act just because there are bigger risk elsewhere, especially when its a no cost action.

Im sure peoples driving at leaving time was a risk, but with them all facing forwards at least anyone walking to their car was visible to those rushing to leave.

[quote=Denis99 ]However, the Grand Prix start at clocking off time was definitely more of a risk

Being a qualified risk assessor you did a risk assessment of both ways of parking then?

How can I put this: do you recall seeing any accidents in the "Grand Prix start"?

The reverse parking in particular was pure non sense. Nobody can give a satisfactory answer as to how it is safer.

I always understood that it was a busyness issue:

* Everyone arrives for work at slightly different times, meaning quiet car parks when arriving.

* Everyone leaves work at about the same time, meaning the car park's busier.

Always been a bit suspicious of the Man from Del Monte if I'm honest.

Phone while driving - just no.

Re all the other risk stuff. I think it's poor communication mainly, not over zealousness. Having said that, there is a self justification in having MOAR rules and MOAR visible controls than the next company or colleague. For some this has overridden the safety in simplicity approach.
We also have many in the workplace who are both risk averse and lack risk judgement skills. This is why employers have a duty of care - because you need to hold the hand of numpty over there all the time. The van driver OP saw is an example.
Finally we also have the confusion of what is health and safety with concerns over liability. Often when people introduce controls, it is our of fear of liability.

I suppose I must be the old dinosaur in the room...
However, the Grand Prix start at clocking off time was definitely more of a risk

Maybe just different working patterns?
I've never worked anywhere that everybody clocks off at the same time, usually they just slowly drift away over the last few hours.

I'm fine with being in the minority point of view.

But they did put a traffic bump in at the exit to stem the follow of traffic out of the car park.

No accidents with free for all parking.

But we did have one accident due to the reverse parking, a lot of folk would park the rear of their car ( wheels) right up to the kerb.

There was a pedestrian path behind the kerb, a couple of people walked into the car protruding onto the path.

I prefer to let Darwins theory of natural selection to take its due course sometimes 🙂

DinoDen signing off,

Re. Phone use whilst driving...

I've been touring around Italy and Sicily for the past three weeks. It seems that overtaking on the brow of a hill with a blind bend across double white lines whilst texting is no worse than ignoring every speed limit.

It's been my experience over the years that people who have a problem with "H&S" don't tend to work in particularly hazardous industries. Those of us who do, and I know there are quite a few on here, tend to have a different approach.

A for it being a bit of an arse covering exercise, well if I ever have to face a judge to answer for why someone has been killed I'd quite like my arse well and truly covered thank you very much. I also want to be able to sleep at night.

I said I'd leave it, but you don't know anything about me or my work history.

Arse covering is not risk assessment...

Served an apprenticeship in a shipyard in the 70's, had my best friend killed in a workplace accident in a alumina rolling plant.

The last place of employment was relatively dangerous with some really high risk areas.

The car park wasn't one of them, but it was to the higher echelons of the organisation.

Qualified risk assessor amongst other senior roles.

Hey ho.

One of my mates has quite a senior post in a large pharmaceutical company. Whilst out on the road he saw one of their drivers smoking in a works van, the driver didn't have a job the next day!

[quote=Denis99 ]There was a pedestrian path behind the kerb, a couple of people walked into the car protruding onto the path.

Did you have a risk assessment for walking? 😉

How do I get myself risk assessor qualified?

Last company I worked for introduced a few safety measures while I was there, most of them have stuck with me...

1) reverse into parking bays. After someone was knocked off their moped by someone reversing out of a space
2) no phone calls while driving, hands free or otherwise. Disciplinary offence if caught out
3) no walking while on a mobile phone. While I was on my redundancy notice, one of the production managers came into the office while I was on the mobile talking to my soon-to-be agency. I left the room. He followed me, telling me off about walking while on the mobile. I pointed out to him that if he hadn't been chasing me to tell me off, I would not have been walking with the mobile...

sitting in the local trade centre car park bays facing each other with a roadway between then, toolstation , paint shop and a few others one sifde , Screwfix and plumbers merchants other side, number of vans and cars drive into bays and then reverse, sometimes both at same time, all while we are drinking free soup courtesy of toolstation, always reverse park you get to see the near mises better.

As much as driving with a mobile in hand - young ladies and van drivers I'm particularly looking at you - raises my blood pressure, I'm not sure it's any less safe than hands free, attention is generally the issue not control

The last place of employment was relatively dangerous with some really high risk areas.

The car park wasn't one of them, but it was to the higher echelons of the organisation.

Qualified risk assessor amongst other senior roles.

I did quite a few for trials activities at other locations and always made sure to include driving (it was invariably by far the highest risk activity). I suspect you could make an argument for stopping any work activity which involved driving as the residual risk was still too high - but then that would clearly also include commuting (not that that was ever risk assessed) and I doubt even the H&S complainers would suggest that was sensible.

Still can't see how it is safer to reverse in.

Stats can be made to confirm all sorts of arguments.

[quote=CountZero ]Do you mean driving as an actual part of the job?
If so, not only would an enormous number of people be out of jobs, including me, but the economy would tank overnight; there would be nobody to transport anything, including accident victims.

I did, though I was thinking at the time more about the sort of thing I did/do which was driving from one workplace to another rather than driving being more inherently part of the job. I stand by my comments, but agree with you - the residual risk of driving is incredibly high, yet it's clearly not something which is feasible to stop people doing (it's a bit whataboutery, but I always think risks of other activities should be compared to one we do nonchalantly every day, especially when people suggest we should stop doing them).

I do still think it is absurd that the HSE show no interest at all in people being killed on the roads by other people who are working as part of an industry - especially when the same people have to abide by strict rules when they are on a specific site where there are no members of the public, but not on public roads.

Never one to let my prejudices get in the way , on reflection and listening to some of the responses on here, yes, it probably is safer to reverse park.

I think I may have let the argument become clouded by the last employer not really taking serious h&s isuues on board.

As opposed to the more visible low risk stuff.

Humble pie has now been eaten for breakfast.

Drive something like this then you can flout the reverse parking rule claiming its safer.

[img] [/img]

Regarding the question about being a qualified risk assessor.

We had a consultant visit us to provide training for a morning a week for six weeks.

Classroom and shopfloor based.

We also had to submit a report on three selected areas of risk within the workplace.

He then marked / assessed the reports to see if we understood the issues whilst cross checking against industry safety standards.

We all enjoyed the course, and it did open our eyes to the world of H&S. he kept stressing that the risk assessments were not an arse covering exercise, and that they should be shared and communicated to the shopfloor employees.

I used to make presentations at the safety briefings about the individual risk assessments, explaining that they were not set in stone, and they needed individuals input to review and update any changes in working practices.

The shopfloor employees ( where most of the higher risk based activities were) were genuinely interested in these briefing sessions. Sadly stopped by the plant manager, who openly said they were boring.........
The team of risk assessor did genuinely feel that they were trying to make the place safer, since I left the whole system has just disintegrated as there is a culture of fear. But that's another workplace thread......

[quote=Denis99 ]Never one to let my prejudices get in the way , on reflection and listening to some of the responses on here, yes, it probably is safer to reverse park.
...
Humble pie has now been eaten for breakfast.

Mods, mods - I don't think this sort of thing is allowed on here.

Interesting about the risk assessment training - I'm sure I never had anything like that, I don't think even an online course. Though TBH most of it is common sense in the correct sense of that phrase. I can't recall even getting any training when I became local H&S rep (though that job mostly consisted of getting a load of circulars to ignore every day).

Going back to the original OP thread about people driving on their mobile.

If we can't alter people's behaviour whilst driving and not using say a hands free phone ( which again is a little risky in my opinion).

Then it's time the government and motor manufacturers got together to find a way to prevent the phone from working whilst being used in a car.

I'm not convinced handsfree is all that safe due to the distraction etc.

This was one of the approaches I tried in the workplace when we couldn't modify people's behaviour.

Time to see I feel the government and motor manufacturers are serious I think.

The use of mobiles whilst driving is pretty widespread now.

Whilst I agree with your comments re driving hands free making phones not work at all in a car wouldn't be good idea. Passengers can have many reasons to want or need to use their phones. To use alcohol as an analogy drunk drivers are unacceptable but drunk passengers are fine.

I think that when I've backed into a parking space, if a driver leaves from beside my car they get a better view over my bonnet. So they might be less likely to be shunted into my car in a crunch. So it's in my interest, and it's being considerate.

The late Mrs sog knew of a manager who phoned into her office and went straight on at a bend, into a tree. She did not survive. You can imagine the effect on the receptionist who was taking the call.

I think a lot of people on here don't understand that a risk is the product up of 2 components; likelihood x severity.

The reality is that why reversing into a space may reduce the likelihood of an accident, the severity of a car park speed accident is is very low 99% of a time and rarely involves human injury. Particularly in a workplace car park with few pedestrians and no children.

It's petty H&S BS like this that detracts from the real goal of H&S management.

@gonefishin - if drunk passengers weren't acceptable then most taxi firms would go out of business! 😆

@Denis99 - I think a lot of car designers/manufacturers need a good slapping, many of the newer features are idiotic and encourage bad (or at least inconsiderate) driving. I had a courtesy car whilst mine was in the garage and there were so many distractions inside the car that it was hard to concentrate on what was going on around me.

I reported a Van being very poorly driven which, when he came up behind a cyclist, actually got closer to the kerb (a very deliberate 'punishment pass') even though there was a completely empty lane next to him (v. quiet dual Carriageway).

Spoke to the company (reasonable sized, couple of offices not a one man band) directly and they were very dismissive and practically laughed it off saying that i was probably making a mistake, that unless there hadn't been an actual accident then there was nothing they could do etc etc.

The response I got from their MD to the email to the Police with the Dash cam footage I cc'd him in to was somewhat more conciliatory on the other hand...

I <3 a happy hippie

It's petty H&S BS like this that detracts from the real goal of H&S management.

I disagree. Firstly, as Denis99 now agrees, it is safer, and while the probability - and in a workplace car park the severity - is low, it's quite reasonable for a firm to decide to implement this rule. The key thing, is that it's explained properly to persuade everyone to comply (just as Dennis99 now agrees and just as he used to give safety talks to employees which got their engagement). It should also not be something which then takes up a lot of time or attention: again, as Dennis99 indicates there will usually be far bigger risks elsewhere, so having introduced simple rules like this and the handrail one, you don't want to have to waste lots of time and resources monitoring and enforcing them.

With regard to the handrail one, bear in mind that some workplace environments will make this very necessary, e.g. those where lots of oily waste is unavoidably produced and stairs cannot be kept free of slippery contaminents. Even in low risk environments like offices, it can still serve a useful purpose: we might not run up the stairs or jump down them three at a time, but the energetic new YTS employee fresh from school might do just that. In that respect, site rules about parking, using handrails, no running etc. help to get everyone to behave generally in safe methodical and predictable ways. Much as I don't like the phrase 'safety culture' these rules do help to instill that attitude and encourage a workforce that self-polices and employees looking out for each other. It should go without saying that it's absolutely essential that managers and senior staff also comply with those rules, and you know that you are on the right track when even a junior employee has the confidence to remind someone much more senior to them (politely but clearly) to use the hand rail, wear PPE properly etc.

The reality is that why reversing into a space may reduce the likelihood of an accident, the severity of a car park speed accident is is very low 99% of a time and rarely involves human injury. Particularly in a workplace car park with few pedestrians and no children.

Actual incident that happened to me:
I used to work in quarrying, for Redland, now Lafarge.
This was about 15 years ago, so they were fairly hot in H&S but there was a lot of old blokes who knew better....
We had designated parking areas and we had to reverse park in them. Fine. No problem.
Unless you're the quarry manager apparently who was a year off retirement and used to park right next to the office door, front first, in his company vehicle. The vehicle was a LWB Renault Traffic van.
I needed to use said van, so I jumped in and started it up. Now, this is partly my fault but I glanced at the gear lever (one of those short stubby ones that pokes out of the dashboard) and assumed it was in neutral.
But it wasn't. Old man who knew it all had left it in gear with the handbrake off..... which he shouldn't have done either.
As soon as the starter turned the engine caught and the van shot forewards into the wall of the office with quite a bang. It probably moved 3-4 feet. If someone had been in front of me I'd have taken their legs off. I hit it with enough force to move 2-3 courses of bricks inwards about 2 inches and damage the van.
This apparently didn't make me popular with the manager although he avoided trying to disciple me as he knew it was mostly his fault and there was no paperwork ever filled in. AFAIK the building is still there and still damaged.
The day after I was sitting talking to one of the other guys and i said to him that the manager knew it was his fault, citing parking location, direction and that it was in gear. I was fairly derogatory about him too. I turned round and he was standing behind me. He was popping mad but he knew there was bugger all he could say about it and he left the room.

Spring Watch presenter now firmly camped outside Denis99's house, in anticipation....

PeterPoddy - That is as much your fault as his.

You didn't check that the van was out of gear or put your foot on the clutch.

The outcome of it was minor property damage and the possibility of that happening with someone directly in front of you, extremely low as it is very likely you would of checked the vehicle properly if someone was in front of you.

Besides, the direction of which the vehicle was parked didn't cause the incident, you could of hurt someone if it had been parked the other way, you might have travelled further and hurt someone.

PeterPoddy - That is as much your fault as his.

No it wasn't. He'd broken the rules. He knew them well enough. If he'd followed any one of the 3 parking rules there'd have been no accident no matter what I did. Yes I was the one driving but I was just the last in the chain. That's why nothing was ever said to me, because he'd have had more explaining to do than me.
It wasn't the only incident he was involved in either. I remember one day I was driving the loading shovel (26t Volvo if I recall correctly) and I was asked to do something I considered unsafe, I forget what it was now, but I backed off, put the bucket on the floor, turned off the engine, climbed down and tossed him the keys with words to the effect of "that's not safe, you want it done, do it yourself". I went off the the tea room for a bit.
This bloke was a know it all and a hazard himself but he was one of the good old boys and my face didn't fit.
There's more, I could go one for a while, but I left not long after. Good riddance.

No it wasn't. He'd broken the rules.

Still reckon you had a responsibility to check. You were in charge of the vehicle at time of the accident, your fault

I watched at a busy traffic light controlled X roads as this bloke in a builders van tried to turn right then immediately left while trying to answer his phone while working out whether to put down his cup of tea or his fag first ! E Mailed the company , zero response . Probably the boss 🙁

No it wasn't. He'd broken the rules. He knew them well enough.

So did you.

If you had followed the "SOP" for starting the van, then it wouldn't have happened. I pretty sure it's one of the first things you get taught on a driving lesson, check to make sure gear is in neutral but turning the ignition.

The fact the building is still damaged shows how cosmetic and minor the damage caused is.

This link might help you.

[url= http://www.wikihow.com/Start-a-Manual-Car ]http://www.wikihow.com/Start-a-Manual-Car[/url]

PeterPoddy - That is as much your fault as his.

Nope. See my comments above about the value of site rules to get everyone to behave in consistent, methodical, predictable ways.

Rules for how cars should be parked (reverse in, handbrake on, netutral gear) are no different to rules about how other machinery should be be operated on site. So if you have a machine with various safety devices on it, there should be a written safe system of work covering how it is to be switched off/shut down/de-energised and left in a safe condition. Yes there is a responsibility on the operator to undertake pre-start checks which should identify if the last person to use it left it in an unsafe condition, but those should only be a back-stop. The primary responsibility rests with the last user to follow the rules [u]and with management to check and ensure that the rules are followed[/u]. If operators are allowed to have different practices in how they leave their machines, then it becomes much more likely, even inevitable, that there will be an accident when someone starts up a machine.

So PeterPoddy was not as much to blame. The only entity as much to blame as the manager was Redland itself: having a manager routinely ignore company safety rules undermines safety across the site, and there should have been a safety management system in place which identified it and corrected it (routine safety inspections/audits and a resulting bollocking for the manager).

Whenever human error is blamed for an accident, the actual human error is often not that of the person doing the job, but the human error of managers and the organisation to properly manage safety in their business.

This link might help you.

[url= http://www.hse.gov.uk/pUbns/priced/hsg65.pdf ]HSE's guide to safety management[/url]

Isn't it also the new user's responsibility to follow procedure for safely starting a machine or vehicle?

Seems to me that safety systems should have backup. So check on shutown AND startup, just in case.

Of course it all depends on if the company had both in place. If they had no startup procedure in place, then PP cannot be blamed for not following it.

Oh and for those who complain about auto handbrakes - you can't have that accident with one 🙂

Nope. See my comments above about the value of site rules to get everyone to behave in consistent, methodical, predictable ways.

And Peter Poddy didn't. He did not follow the SOP for starting a vehicle.

Thanks for the link but I am happy without it.

IOSH qualified and routinely risk assess very high risk marine environments.

Isn't it also the new user's responsibility to follow procedure for safely starting a machine or vehicle?

The manager routinely parked where he should not have done, and when PeterPoddy went to drive the vehicle, he found that it had been left in gear with the handbrake off. How likely was it that the first time PeterPoddy drove it also just happened to be the first time the manager had left it in gear with the handbrake off? It is very likely that the manager routinely left it like that, i.e. in a dangerous condition. Tolerating that sort of thing happening in a workplace and effectively relying [u]solely[/u] on the next operator undertaking pre-start checks to identify the dangerous condition, is asking for trouble. Over-reliance on single individuals not making a mistake is a classic safety failure: British Rail's safety management system for Signals Passed at Danger (SPADs) was similarly to treat them as human errors which were dealt with by disciplinary action, but after the Clapham crash it was forced to recognise that with so many train journeys and so many signals, it was statistically inevitable that drivers would pass a (small but unacceptable) percentage of red signals, and that consequently it was not sufficient just to rely on the driver seeing the red signal and stopping accordingly.

PeterPoddy said that the vehicle was not one he was familiar with and it was not immediately obvious that the gear stick was not in neutral. Continuing with the analogy of other machines, let's say that everyone on site operates an Acme 4567 CNC lathe, with the exception of PeterPoddy's manager who operates an Imperial Super Widget CNC lathe. It's all the more important that everyone adheres to the same safe working practices when shutting down the machines and leaving them in a safe condition, if PeterPoddy or one of his colleagues may be asked to operate the Imperial Super Widget CNC lathe, with which they are less familiar.

IOSH qualified and routinely risk assess very high risk marine environments.

Providing you are only undertaking risk assessments of specific activities in your own field of expertise, your fellow workers should be OK. However, if you are working at management level with responsibility for site wide safety and implementing and overseeing safety management systems, then I would be concerned.