Project Description
Managing Road Risk: What, Why & How…
A compelling, sector-relevant event that tackled road risk with clarity, urgency, and practical insight.
Hosted at the National Space Centre in Leicester, Managing Road Risk: What, Why & How was a must-attend for anyone serious about reducing harm and improving road safety culture. Run by the National Highways Commercial Incident Prevention team and their Driving for Better Business programme, the event brought together fleet professionals, safety advocates, and policy influencers for a focused one-day conference. Organised by National Highways, the event delivered a sharp blend of strategic framing and operational guidance—making the case for why road risk matters and how organisations can respond.
Sessions explored the human, legal, and reputational stakes, with real-world examples and plain-English takeaways. The venue added gravitas, but it was the content – credible, actionable, and empathetic – that made the day stand out.
Attendees left with renewed clarity on their responsibilities and practical tools to embed safer practices across fleets and supply chains. This wasn’t just a talking shop—it was a call to action, grounded in evidence and sector realities.
The Project EDWARD team thoroughly enjoyed the day – a real showcase of good practice in work-related road safety and risk management.
Find out more on their Driving Change page
The video below includes some short interviews with both speakers and delegates, as well as the thoughts of Lillian Greenwood MP, Minister for the Future of Roads.
Mark Cartwright
Head of the Commercial Vehicle Incident Prevention Team
National Highways
What’s the need for Driving for Better Business?
At work drivers are a good proportion of those involved in incidents on our roads. Probably about a third of all incidents at the very least involve an at work driver. We know that probably 600 at work drivers will die on the roads each year. It’s a massive part of our Road to Zero Harm activity in terms of reducing it and getting professional drivers to be doing the right kind of things in the way that they drive, making the right decisions, being fit to drive and taking their job seriously.
Try and get yourself in the mind of the people who are attending here. What sort of things would keep them awake at night?
I think it’s just the very fear of a risk that actually they could be getting that phone call. So we know that driving is easily one of the most dangerous things that most people do during their lives and that applies to at their drivers.
Those companies take the safety and the well-being of their drivers seriously and this event is all about providing the tools and that motivation to push it on a step and that’s the kind of things that keeps our clientele here today awake at night.
One of the big things being launched here is an incident reporting toolkit. Tell us a bit about that.
I’ve been around the transport industry most of my working life. I come across an awful lot of organisations where their health and safety management is very robust across their organisation except it tends not to extend onto the road. I think there’s very much an out of sight out of mind piece there. The incident investigation toolkit is all about learning from the mistakes of the past, learning those lessons, developing the right interventions. There’s an awful lot of those businesses in my estimation don’t investigate their on-road incidents with anywhere near the rigor and expertise that they do about on-site incidents and that’s really the gap the guide is designed to plug.
Anne-Marie challenged us all to just do one thing when we go home from here. What will you be doing? What one thing will you do after this event?
I think the thing that I’ll be doing is understanding the levels of risk attached to driving. We take it way too flippantly almost – take it for granted. And talk to people. It’s not just about the corporate stuff – talk to your families, talk to your friends, talk to your neighbours about the fact that this is a dangerous activity and actually there’s some really simple fixes – which most revolve around having the right attitude to that level of risk and taking it seriously. So, talk.
Anne-Marie Penny
Driving for Better Business Programme Manager
National Highways
Tell me why you think this is such a great event
We’ve done this third year we’ve done this now. Every year there is a buzz. It’s a different audience every year. So we make sure we try not to duplicate. But there’s some excitement around the place about opportunities and inspiration for what people can actually do when they get back to their own organisations to improve safety.
What are some examples of fleet organisations who’ve worked with you and it has led to their success? talk us through one and two of the little examples.
Do you know we’ve got so many case studies on the website, but just to pick out a few – we’ve got Amey. So Amey, a well-known uh contractor. When they first registered with the program, they were actually managing their work-related robots quite well. When they went through some of the programs that we’d offered with some of the tools, it highlighted gaps that they had in their management. So they were able to say, “So we’re doing lots of this bit well, but actually there was a large area over here that we hadn’t actually got to grips with.” And DFBB helped them understand where their gaps were so that they could actually address those gaps. And then we just come down to smaller organisations that wouldn’t have thought maybe of using telematics and how useful that is in giving them data about the way their drivers drive and looking for training opportunities to make sure that actually people are aware of what they’re doing on the road and how to manage situations on the road as well. So all of that contributes to a greater safety culture.
There’s so much data available. Are you involved in ways of finding out what’s important and what’s less important?
I think that really is for the companies to understand. But certainly when it’s things like speeding events and harsh braking and other things on the actual driving behaviours that telematics can pick up quite easily, that’s quite important to identify an early stage, because firstly if you look at the bottom line that’s going to be costly for your company if someone’s driving like that. But actually on a human level, it’s going to cause more risk. So the more erratic somebody drives, the more risk of there being an incident and injury. So yeah, lots of lots of possibilities there for driving down into the data. But it’s for the organisations to understand what they’re looking at and what they need to do.
What are you going to take away from here? What’s going to inspire you as a result of today?
Do you know I come here hoping that I can inspire people, but invariably when you go anywhere you do take away stuff. I think what inspires me is the amount of people that come up and say, “We really want to do better. We really like what you’ve done. Can you help us with this?” So, what I’m taking away is that we need to communicate more with our community out there to find out what their problems are, what their issues are, and how we can support them better.
Jason Vallance
Independent Fleet Risk Consultant
Why have you come to this event today?
I’m Jason Vallance. I’m an independent fleet risk consultant. Ex insurance and road safety background and I’m here today to really pick up on good practice and see what the latest is in thinking and to make sure that I’m up to speed. It’s nice to see some of the ideas that I put forward come to fruition. So it’s great and also to meet and network with a number of like- minded practitioners.
What are the big ticket items in your world right now?
The big ticket item for me is ultimately getting the um leadership to change. Business owners and leaders, executives need to understand how important this is to their bottom line. Fleet Risk Management safety just makes a perfect sense. One, you have to do it. And the second you’ll be daft not to do it because there’s big money to be saved.
What about this idea of top down and bottom up? How does that how can you inspire organisations to have that kind of meeting of minds?
Well, I think you’ve got to start somewhere first. My personal view is that you got to start top down. It has to start at the very top and cascade down. But by creating an environment and a culture that fosters the bottom up input, then you get the best of both worlds. And hopefully you meet in the middle at the right position.
Glenn Hartwell
Motor Transport Warrant Officer
British Army 159 Regiment Royal Logistical Corps
What are you doing here and what are you gaining from the day?
So, so I’ve come here again today – I came last year, and absolutely fantastic – lots of resources, lots of information, lots of knowledge, able to network. I’ve come here again today and I’m going to go away with a headful of ideas about things that we can implement to make our drivers a lot safer on the roads.
Give us some examples of how good practice finds its way into military world.
So we always try and learn from the industry experts – you know civilian organisations. I give an example last year – we talked about using our privately owned vehicles and one of the things we talked about was driver health. We have our guys go about using their own vehicles and we didn’t question the driver’s health, so we implemented that into one of the authorisation forms. Now when a driver uses his own vehicle, we check their condition as well as the vehicle.
Mental and physical?
Absolutely.
Tell us about the importance of mental health these days for driver safety
If our drivers are in a good mental state, then they’re going to be safer drivers. So we want to make sure that our drivers go out of the on the road always as safe as possible.
Annie just before lunch – she sent us all the way to say do one thing when you get back to work after this event. Are you on this thing? What will you do?
I’m going to review our MT policies, our motor transport policies, and I’m going to try and use them in conjunction with the driving for better business policy builder and see how we can map them across and learn from industry.
Kate Walker
CEO
Diabetes Safety Organisation
Tell us who you are and why you’re here
Hi, I’m Kate Walker and I am here from the Diabetes Safety Organisation delivering information and awareness around the risks from diabetes on our roads.
Tell us how well you’re going down with the people who are here
It’s been a great event. Everyone’s really interested to know more. What impact does diabetes have in this area and why is it having such a significant influence on the industry and across fleet?
What are you looking ahead and worrying about in terms of the threat of diabetes, the growth of diabetes, and what do we need to do about it?
I think the biggest challenge we’ve got ahead is just the sheer numbers. It’s on the rise. We’re having 700 a day diagnosed. We know that one in three drivers who drive professionally for a living over 55 have diabetes. And so the fear for us is the complications and the implications around pedal confusion, eyesight, hypos behind the wheel, and really that collision and the risks that are there. And for us, I think really the quick solution is education. Bring up awareness and educate managers and fleets on how to help themselves and their staff to stay safe around diabetes in the workplace.
Just tell us about your relationship with Driving for Better Business and National Highways.
So we work very closely with Driving for Better Business and alongside National Highways developing new guidance and work on our latest report that’s looking at the five risks in the workplace and how we take that forward and again been invited to great events like this today where we get to share and raise awareness around such an important topic.
Professor Tim Marsh
Managing Director
Anker & Marsh
What’s been the best thing for you about this event?
I think one of the one of the great things in the world of driver safety is that people in this field are beginning to embrace what we would consider the basics of excellence. There was a speaker talking about HOP (Human and Organisational Performance), I was talking about just culture, somebody else mentioned just culture – that whole principle that you change the situation, you don’t try and tell the person to take more care and I think many more organisations are beginning to embrace that as a principle of how we go from where we are to a much better level of standard. And I think the fact that people are paying attention to that now is the thing that I’ve noticed here most. It is not about gimmicks. It’s not about messaging. It’s about facilitation. And the fact that all the speakers are talking about that is incredibly reassuring to see.
Lillian Greenwood MP
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Future of Roads
Department for Transport
Lillian, we know that education is key and events like this play such a big part and help us all involved with driving for work to understand how we can improve safety. I love the fact that during your presentation you said do your bit.
Absolutely. We’ve all got a role to play and the great thing about this event today is obviously National Highways’ program Driving for Better Business is that education piece. It’s working with employers, with organisations, telling them the changes that they can make, giving them that support so that we can all have better, safer roads, better safer organisations.
