The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA), an EPHA member, has developed a paper commenting on the current Community strategy on health and safety at work, 2002-2006.
In general RoSPA welcomes the Commission Communication ‘Adapting to change in work and society: a new Community strategy on health and safety at work 2002 - 2006’ (COM (2002) 118 final) and particularly the twin themes of focusing on contemporary challenges and linking health and safety at work with the broader EU agenda.
The importance of new initiatives on health and safety at work are emphasised whilst taking into the consideration that a heavy regulatory regime might lead to an excessive administrative burden on small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). RoSPA therefore encourages voluntary and other non-regulatory measures to obtain the goals of the strategy.
Having the prevention of accidents as its core activity, RoSPA points out the large amount of work related accidents each year. However, more interestingly, they point out that ’the management of occupational road risk within occupational health and safety management will be a test of the credibility of the new approach’.
Out of the 50 000 road deaths a year, about a quarter to a third of these (13 000 -17 000) are likely to be work related. The comparable figure for all other work related accidents is 4 500. It is therefore, according to RoSPA, ’safe to assume than over twice as many workers are killed on Europe’s roads while at work than in accidents in fixed workplaces’. RoSPA therefore calls on the EU to respond to this problem.
For the full RoSPA report please see the attachment.
