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Jul

11

Courier companies -Can you cope without your PC or server?

Filed Under Courier World, Current affairs, Driving

This is the fourth in a series of blogs by Fleet Risk Consultant’s Nigel Grainger.

Can you cope without your server/computer?

If I told you that the Police could come and seize all your computers and seal off your office for up to 48 hours, just because one of your vehicles has been involved in a collision, would you be surprised or concerned?

The Police treat all serious collisions, those involving death or life changing injuries, as crime scenes. As such the officers investigating these cases are not usually traffic police, they are the officers who usually investigate serious crimes such as drug dealers and murderers. They operate with reference to a document titled ‘Road Death Investigation Manual’ it lays out how deaths on the road should be investigated and prosecuted. If the Police suspect that important evidence is stored electronically on your premises they will obtain a warrant and seize any evidence they need. This could be your server, hard drives, documents, files. If you keep records at home they also have the power to seize items from there too.

It also clearly states that the Senior Investigating Officer should be ‘resolute in withstanding pressure from others to open roads prematurely where such roads should be considered crime scenes’.

This involves securing the scene, restricting access, identifying the parties involved and commencing a collection of forensic information. The collection of evidence is usually undertaken by accident investigators and/or scenes of crimes officers, this immediately causes a delay because there are only a finite number of specialist officers and they have to be routed to the scene from wherever they happen to be. HM Coroner may also decide he wishes to visit the scene which will also delay the whole task of re-opening the road.

Let us take the scenario of a road traffic incident back to the start. There are three vehicles involved in an accident on the motorway and one of the occupants of one vehicle is unfortunately killed. The first police officer must survey the scene from a safe position and assess the incident. The Police must then establish the approximate number of casualties and identify hazards e.g. fuels spillage, debris, fire and hazardous goods. They will then prepare access routes for emergency vehicles, taking care not to destroy any evidence at the scene. The final task at this stage is to document the types and numbers of vehicles involved.

The next task is to identify and protect the scene. This will involve setting up a system to prevent any further incidents occurring and protecting the valuable evidence at the scene from contamination. The next priority is to protect and save lives, when victims are taken to hospital they should be accompanied by a police officer and the details of the ambulance crew and hospital noted and caution taken to avoid cross contamination of evidence.

Whilst in the early stages of dealing with the incident the police should note the weather conditions, identify witnesses and details of vehicles involved and those attending the scene. The police are also instructed not to move vehicles unless absolutely necessary and to leave in position all switches, seats, mirrors and other controls until the vehicle has been checked by the Accident Investigators.

Once all evidence has been gathered the whole area will be rechecked for anything else. The vehicles will eventually be removed, but delays can also occur here as there may be constraints on how the vehicles can be moved due to their load and the availability of removal vehicles as some vehicles may have to be carried so as not to destroy any evidence on the vehicle.

As you can see from the above all the evidence collection and other duties are your explanation for the time taken to re-open major routes after an incident has occurred.

You should all be aware that the Police may seize mobile telephones, data recorders, tachographs, engine management chips, telematics systems, laptop computers and the vehicles themselves and hold them until after any prosecution and appeal period, at which time they will be returned. In my experience this can be anything up to and occasionally beyond twelve months, dependent on the circumstances of the incident.

You will be interested to note that a section of the procedures covers Corporate Liability and states that consideration should be given to whether working regimes, working practices or negligence of a corporate body led to the death of the person involved in a traffic incident. This looks at duty of care and is aimed at establishing whether a body failed in its duty of care to the public and specifically the deceased.

The lesson in all 200 pages of the ACPO Road Death Investigation Manual is that the Police now treat all fatal incidents and serious injury incidents in the same way throughout the country, and, if we as fleet managers do not want a couple of police officers sitting across the desk from us, we must ensure our risk management policies are watertight and that we are rigorous in our pursuit of a zero accident culture. We should be confident that we are doing all in our power to prevent incidents with training and good working practices, and hope that the drivers we train pass on to their friends and families the lessons they learn, because it is my belief that, until we are prepared as a nation to undergo a driving test every five years to prove our suitability to drive a machine capable of delivering death and injury to ourselves and third parties, the police are going to have to use the Road Death Investigation Manual all too often.

By treating the scene as a crime scene they are already assuming that a crime has been committed, therefore they are looking for someone to prosecute. That someone could be YOU. They will seal the scene and have the collision investigators examine the area minutely for evidence.

Also any vehicle involved in such a collision will be impounded until the end of any court hearings (including any appeals); this process can take anything up to 18 months.

Nigel

Nigel Grainger is the senior consultant and Fleet Risk Management, the first resort for companies with fleets that want to have robust policies in place, to protect them and their employees.

Sarah Arrow
www.thecouriershop.co.uk
www.ArrowLightHaulage.co.uk

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