Safety
Injury Prevention is one of our core values. We believe all injuries are preventable. We have a responsibility to our employees to work safely and conduct our operations in the safest way possible.
We continue to embed a culture of Injury Prevention across the Group. We want safe behaviour to become a way of life for our employees both at work and at home. Our ethos is simple: 'If you cannot do it safely, don't do it.'
All employees receive Injury Prevention training and a handbook to engage them actively in the process. Additional training is provided to directors, managers, supervisors and safety representatives to help them to lead on Injury Prevention. Ongoing programmes of briefings and specialist safety training support all employees as appropriate.
In addition to the handbook, the Injury Prevention database has been designed and rolled out to help log injury prevention data and track resulting actions to completion. Over 300,000 contacts are recorded on the system every year.
The responsibilities and actions are clearly mapped and each record details the resulting actions. The database can also assist with actions arising from meetings, audits, inspections, surveys and inquiries.
The Injury Prevention database is a valuable tool in helping make our working environment as safe as possible for our employees and customers.
Managing safety
The Executive Safety Committee chaired by the Chief Executive leads the safety programme and committee members include the managing directors and presidents of our separate business units. We also invite people from outside the company to join our meetings and provide an external perspective.
This year we have had a particular focus on improving infrastructure safety. We have been working closely with Network Rail to identify and manage rail infrastructure risks. In North America we have been risk assessing rail crossings on our school routes. We have an ongoing programme of route risk assessment in UK Bus.
Making school routes safer
In First Student we have initiated a major programme to make school routes safer. Risk assessments have been conducted on over 3,000 railway crossings on our school routes. We are working closely with a range of partners to implement the resulting action plans and the risk assessment findings have been incorporated into driver training.
We continue to achieve improvements in our safety performance. There have been no staff fatalities this year. Our Lost Time Injury rate has reduced by 18% in the last 12 months and 47% over the last four years.
Assaults on staff also continue to reduce. We have a zero tolerance policy towards assaults in the workplace and will continue to do everything we can to prevent them. Customer-facing staff are offered conflict avoidance training and we work closely with police to improve the prosecution rate of offenders.
The improvements in our safety performance have been overshadowed by the death of our Operations Manager from Texas Rio Grande Valley in a collision which involved one of our Greyhound coaches. Our thoughts and sympathy are with his family. Safety remains a priority for our business and we will continue to work to ensure maximum safety standards throughout the operations.
Passenger injury rates have reduced by 9% and bus collisions by 7% in the last 12 months.
Our (Category A) Signals Passed At Danger (SPAD) rate also continues to reduce. However no SPAD is acceptable to us and we will continue to seek to achieve zero SPADs.
There were five passenger fatalities this year: three in our UK Bus operations, one in Greyhound due to a road traffic accident, and one in UK Rail when a passenger at the platform fell into the path of a passing train. A number of non-passenger fatalities occurred in circumstances beyond our control, mainly as a result of road traffic accidents. All such incidents are tracked through our Injury Prevention reporting programmes. We deeply regret all these incidents, learn from each one and strive to do all we can to prevent future occurrences.
We remain focused on driver training and have improved passenger information on avoiding injury risks. New DriveGreen driver feedback systems on all our UK buses promote safer and more fuel-efficient driving. In North America many buses are installed with Drive Cam systems, which monitor driving performance and encourage safer driving.
In First Student all new drivers are taught how to risk assess their route using a training module called 'Know Your Route'. Prior to the start of each school year, safety in service training reminds all drivers of the importance of reporting any route hazards or safety issues. The risk assessment process is applied every time a route changes.