It’s easy to be lulled into complacency. New rules come with a bedding-in period in which more leniency is applied. The court system means an inevitable time lag between the introduction of new motoring laws and the hearing of cases.
But the facts are that the combination of the 2022 Highway Code’s Hierarchy of Road Users and the new motoring law of ‘Causing Serious Injury by Careless or Inconsiderate Driving’ means drivers, of all types of heavy goods or passenger transport vehicle, cannot give complacency the time of day.
We are now two years on from the new law’s introduction and there’s no excuse to not know what it is determined to punish.
Warnings about the new regulatory framework are intended to help, not hinder, bus and coach operators. It is not to make fleet operators pay more for insurance but actually pay what can be significantly less. When we say ‘pay’, we mean in terms of premiums – the huge reward for better risk management. But paying less can also mean not losing a livelihood, whether as a driver or an operator. It can mean not shedding contracts, because your drivers no longer have a licence.
Facing a prison sentence, having injured a vulnerable road user to the degree the law deems serious – a broken bone upwards – is a real possibility. The new 2022 motoring law has no fines to levy, so can only punish the guilty with a driving ban and potentially a prison sentence of up to two years.
The law’s sentencing guidelines also directly reference the Hierarchy of Road Users and suggest commercial drivers should face a more severe penalty than others, particularly when injuring a vulnerable road user. Furthermore, employers are under more regulatory scrutiny than ever. Should a driver, under caution, implicate them, those prosecuting will investigate.
If involved in an incident, firms who took none of this seriously will be in the worst possible position. Complacency is typically the enemy of the robust risk management courts want to see, should a driver be involved in a ‘serious injury’, or even more severe incident.
Our aim at McCarron Coates is to do everything possible to communicate the realities of the legal framework in which operators run their businesses. Having already offered our clients a free, in-person specialist legal representation service the minute a driver is taken to a police station, we have launched our own Road Hierarchy board game. This drives home key messages that need to be understood and acted upon.
Whether you play it, and consequently up your game in your business, or just do a bit of homework into the new law, you will hopefully not continue risking things, believing it will ‘not happen to you.’ Being in denial could just make you a major headline and case study of an operator that should have taken the right steps to control their risks.
