Does road safety have any lessons for workplace health and safety

Abstract

Work health and safety (WHS) and road safety are distinctive perspectives of public health but they share much in common. Both have evolved from a former focus on individual responsibility to embracing systemwide, integrated approaches. Both now talk of incidents rather than accidents. Both are now characterised by proactive rather than reactive responses and their broad countermeasure approaches share many similarities. However, there are various aspects of WHS policy and practice that could be examined in relation to the road safety experience, particularly how compliance and deterrence approaches work best in WHS; the use of rewards and incentives; better attention to young worker safety; improved collection, analysis and usage of WHS data; and optimal use of WHS auditing and inspection programs. The aim of such examinations should be to gauge if current WHS policies and practices are appropriately balanced in light of the road safety experience.