Road traffic accidents, one of the main causes of death in the workplace

According to the European Road Safety Observatory, the direct costs of workplace road traffic accidents amount to around €2,000 million per year in Spain, around £3,000 million in England and around $55,000 million in the United States.

Javier Llamazares, Director General of FESVIAL, has recently spoken about the negative effects of motorisation: “Of the thousands of road traffic accidents that occur, many of them are in the workplace, and they cause the State an average of 161 accidents per day,” Llamazares states.

In 2015, there were 58,842 workplace road traffic accidents in Spain, of which 43,202 were ‘in itinere‘, i.e. from home to work and vice versa (73.4%), and 15,640 occurred during working hours (26.6%). Workplace road traffic accidents account for 11.1% of the total number of work accidents resulting in sick leave in Spain, which amounted to 529,248.

As the severity of the workplace accident increases, the influence of traffic grows, accounting for 11% of minor accidents, 22.2% of serious ones and 27.5% of fatal ones.

On 25 May, the day “Road Safety in the Company, VIII Meeting of Good Practices” will be held in Valencia, promoted by the DGT and organised by FESVIAL. At this meeting, administrations, trade unions, employers’ organisations and companies will share new experiences in preventing workplace road accidents.

“Incorporating this discipline into the business management system is a great challenge, but an absolutely necessary one in order to reduce workplace traffic accidents (on commutes from home to work and from work to home), which have serious human and economic repercussions, since in many cases they could have been avoided by applying preventive measures,” says Luis Montoro, President of FESVIAL.