Help cut road fatalities by giving drivers vital life-saving skills

Equipping fleet drivers with life-saving skills could significantly reduce the number of people who die in road crashes, as well as giving those employees vital abilities in the wider community.

David Higginbottom, CEO of Driver First Assist, told delegates at the Fleet200 Strategy Network meeting in Reading that research by the World Health Organisation (WHO) has found around 50% of road fatalities could be avoided if people first at the scene knew what to do.

“There are lots of people that die in road traffic collisions (RTC) before the emergency services arrive, and a fair proportion of those are dying unnecessarily because those persons at the scene didn’t know what to do,” he added.

“A common cause is an obstructed airway which, if you know what you you’re doing, is very easy to identify and deal with.”

It is with these situations in mind that DFA was formed around 10 years ago in partnership with emergency services with the aim of giving drivers the skills and ability to manage themselves safely and respond to incidents.

As well as learning the first aid skills needed to treat casualties, the training programme also covers areas such as what to do as there may be other vehicles moving around, as well as protecting the collision scene and preventing further injury.

The training programme is delivered by highly-qualified and experienced emergency services personnel and covers:

• Command and control techniques for scene safety
• Emergency service messaging
• Trauma-based first-aid skills.
• Guidance for all types of road vehicles and users.

“What we deliver is incident management,” says Higginbottom. “In being able to deal with an incident, you’re going to be able to assess risk and these are skills that you can use in any set of circumstances.

“You come out of the training programme, not just being able to provide first aid assistance, not just being able to provide yourself with a safe scenario if you find yourself in those circumstances, it actually makes you a safer person.”

Higginbottom adds: “You’d be surprised at the number of people that go on our training programme that would have turned down the opportunity to be trained as a workplace first aider.

“But because it’s more than that, they go on to the course and they come away thinking ‘wow, I now know there are things that I can do’, and because the training involves important elements of first aid, people learn, surprisingly enough for the first time, what cardiac arrest is, what a defibrillator is etc..”