Legal loophole allowing construction vehicles to ignore critical safety measures
Marking the beginning of Road Safety Week, the Mineral Products association warns that a legal loophole is allowing critical safety measures to be bypassed by industry vehicles.
The mineral products industry is responsible for delivering one million tonnes of mineral products from over 2000 sites throughout the UK, including aggregates and asphalt each and every day totalling 360mt pa. The industry is one of the major users of rail and water freight but the majority of this total is transported by road, including virtually all “final mile” deliveries to construction projects
Consequently, for the Mineral Products Association (MPA), road safety, particularly that of vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and cyclists, is paramount, and extends beyond members’ sites to the wider community
Recognising this, the MPA took the initiative in 2011 of developing its own cycle safe campaign and its members subsequently agreed a policy of retrofitting their existing HGV s with cameras, more mirrors and other technology, procuring new vehicles incorporating modern technology as well as increasing driver training.
MPA was also an early supporter of the Construction Logistics & Community Safety (CLOCS) initiative which took account of the efforts made by the mineral products industry. Bringing together all elements of the construction industry and its supply chain with the active support of road safety campaigners, CLOCS revolutionises the management of work related road risk and embeds a road safety culture across the sector.
The CLOCS Standard has been developed for use by the construction industry to reduce collisions between industry vehicles and vulnerable road users. Implemented by construction clients through contracts, it provides a common standard for managing road safety to be implemented in a consistent manner by construction clients, contractors, the supply chain and hauliers.
In recent years, the initiative has significantly improved road safety as the whole construction supply chain has taken sustained action to train drivers, equip HGVs with additional safety equipment to eliminate driver blind spots and improve the planning of deliveries to sites in order to reduce collisions between industry vehicles and vulnerable road users. The recently published MPA’s Driver’s Handbook which has already reached 20,000 drivers is a resource for all drivers to help them understand and manage the risks that they face and can create when driving and operating vehicles for work.
However, CLOCS is still not implemented across the UK, being largely London focussed, and construction clients need to ensure CLOCS is a general procurement condition. There is a renewed campaign underway however to spread the use of CLOCS across the UK and the ease with which construction clients, contractors, suppliers and hauliers can access and implement the scheme should ensure its benefits are felt nationally.
Alongside this, the MPA has also been calling on the Department for Transport for some years to close a loophole in the law enabling significantly unregulated HGVs to operate. The legal loophole means that hundreds of so- called “volumetric vehicles” delivering construction materials such as concrete are regulated as “engineering plant” rather than HGVs.
In practice, however, volumetrics are HGVs which carry the raw materials for making concrete in hoppers on the back of the vehicle but are subject to very limited regulation. In contrast, the commonly seen ready mix concrete mixers with rotating drums are fully regulated as HGVs.
This lack of regulation means that volumetric drivers do not have any limits on working hours, whereas HGV drivers have to meet strict driver’s hours’ limits imposed for safety reasons. Companies operating volumetrics do not require HGV Operator licences and are not regulated by the Traffic Commissioners, who have powers to stop a low-grade HGV business from operating). Volumetrics also typically operate to well above regulated HGV weight limits – for example well above 40 tonnes when the equivalent HGV limit is 32 tonnes. The issue here is not the use of volumetrics, which are particularly suited to delivering smaller loads of concrete to customers, but the fact that they are able to ignore critical safety regulations required for other HGVs. Whereas a number of MPA member companies choose to operate volumetrics to the same regulatory standards as other HGVs, the current loopholes enable other businesses to operate volumetrics to a low level of regulation which should horrify anyone interested in road safety. Government action is long overdue.
The MPA is keen to support Road Safety Week and will continue to work to promote on road safety.
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