FLEET managers have a moral, legal and economic duty to protect employees while at work - including while on the road, according to BSM Fleet Training head of safety and loss management Allen Bewley. He said the UK's accident statistics - with 10 people killed and 900 people injured on the roads each day - would be deemed unacceptable in any other area of industrial safety, yet such statistics were viewed as an almost inevitable risk for road users.

'Road accidents, however slight, touch every level of society, every level of responsibility and virtually every fleet operator in the world and whichever way you try to reconcile the facts, road accidents represent losses - lost efficiency, lost productivity, lost quality and lost profit,' said Bewley.

He added there was a flaw in the assumption that driver training alone would immediately and fundamentally alter employees' on-the-road behaviour. He said: 'For any programme to maintain and sustain a downward trend beyond the immediate flavour of the month benefit into medium and long term, it is necessary to look over and above the simple provision of training into the whole concept of road safety, loss control and accident prevention.'