Driving for Work, Governance and Absence of Evidence
Today’s reporting in The Irish Times highlights a growing loss of confidence in Ireland’s road safety governance at a time when road deaths are rising and public concern is intensifying.
That concern is understandable. But if we are serious about reducing harm, we must also confront an uncomfortable question: what progress, if any, has been made in managing driving for work risk inside Irish organisations?
Driving for work remains one of the most dangerous activities people undertake as part of their job. Yet it continues to sit in a grey zone between road safety, workplace safety and organisational accountability. As a result, it is frequently under-managed, under-measured and under-scrutinised.
“When asked what policies the organisation had in relation to work related road safety, around half (47%) of businesses reported having none”
This is not a new issue. In 2011, the Road Safety Authority and the Health and Safety Authority jointly commissioned independent research by Millward Brown to assess how Irish businesses were managing driving for work risk[2]. The findings were stark. Almost half of businesses surveyed - 47% - reported having no driving for work policy whatsoever. Fewer than four in ten carried out any form of driver selection or licence checking and even these checks were inconsistent and heavily sector-dependent. Basic controls such as journey planning, risk assessment and crash data analysis were the exception rather than the norm.
Fifteen years on, there is a notable absence of updated, independent evidence on whether this position has improved. From our experience working with Irish employers across multiple sectors, there is little to suggest that it has. Indeed, it is likely that any new, objective research would show minimal progress in the systematic management of driving for work risk, particularly in grey-fleet and professional services environments.
“When driving for work is treated as incidental rather than safety-critical, harm migrates from boardrooms to roads.”
This matters because unmanaged organisational risk has real-world consequences. When driving for work is treated as incidental rather than safety-critical, harm migrates from boardrooms to roads. The cumulative effect of this employer-side non-compliance and invisibility helps explain why confidence in road safety governance is now being openly questioned. Education and enforcement alone cannot compensate for the absence of basic risk management within organisations that require people to drive for their work every day.
If policymakers and regulators are serious about reducing deaths and serious injuries, they must be equally serious about evidence. I would strongly welcome the commissioning and publication of new, independent research into the current state of business preparedness and compliance in relation to driving for work - explicitly benchmarked against the 2011 RSA/HSA findings. Without this, we are left debating outcomes while ignoring root causes.
Driving for work should be managed with the same rigour as any other high-risk work activity. Until we measure how well - or how poorly - that is being done, progress will remain assumed rather than proven and preventable harm will continue.
Ron McNamara
CEO, DriverFocus
Cited Sources:
The Irish Times - Road safety group joins hauliers in saying it has lost faith in RSA https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2026/01/26/road-safety-group-joins-hauliers-in-saying-it-has-lost-faith-in-rsa/
[2] An Garda Síochána, Health and Safety Authority and the Road Safety Authority Survey on Employer Driving for Work Management Practices – August 2012