September/October Issue 63 - Flipbook - Page 28
NEWS
SLOW DOWN M
In June 2017, Slow Down Move
Over was launched in the UK,
following an incident in which
a recovery worker was struck
at the roadside, leaving him
severely injured.
“Sadly, one of my workers was hit
whilst loading a car onto a truck in
Chelmsford.
“I attended the incident and to
be honest I wasn’t sure if he was
going to make it when I saw him
lying there,” explains Paul Anstee,
owner of Service on Site.
“Thankfully he survived, but he
was quite severely injured and
that really reiterated to me the
dangers of this job.”
“SDMO is a campaign working to
raise awareness of the vulnerability
of all road users, who may find
themselves either stranded or
working at the roadside,” Anstee
explains.
“This really is a huge issue for road
users at the moment, especially
considering how much busier
our roads have become in recent
years.
“There are currently laws in
relation to due care and attention,
but we want there to be a specific
law introduced related to taking
necessary steps when confronted
with these scenarios.
“We also want to push for changes
to the Highway Code, so that it has
better guidance and instruction for
drivers, particularly learners, on
confronting these situations.”
The severity of this issue is not
known, primarily due to a lack of
detail in the recording of accidents.
“It is difficult to know exactly how
many incidents like this occur
each year, because sadly they
are just registered as road traffic
collisions, there is no specific
mention of it involving someone
on the roadside.”
Around the same time as the
launch of SDMO, a worker was
tragically killed after being hit
working on a car at the roadside.
Steven Godbold had been
attending to a broken down vehicle
when he was struck and tragically
killed at the age of 52.
In the wake of his death, his
partner Sam Cockerill teamed
up with Anstee to promote the
message of road safety and to
hopefully prevent similar incidents
ever happening again.
There are similar initiatives to
SDMO already in place in the US,
Canada and Australia, all of which
have had great success and
gained significant publicity.
Anstee is pleased that the
campaign has been effective
elsewhere, and hopes that it can
have a similar affect in the UK.
“SDMO is very big in those
countries, and we hope to bring
more awareness of the issue to
the UK.
“In the US and Australia, it is
written into law and is enforced by
police, and we are hoping that it
will one day be the case here too.”
Like all industries, the recovery
industry has faced its own
challenges in the past 12 months,
and the SDMO campaign has
been hindered by this.
“As for everybody the past year
has presented unprecedented
challenges and I have had to be
focusing on my own business.
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