Road Safety – From Paper to People
Our blog, “Road Safety: From Paper to People,” is now also available as a podcast.
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Road Safety – From Paper to People
Every 104 minutes, a worker somewhere in the world dies from a work-related injury. And the single most common cause? A vehicle incident.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2024 Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, transportation incidents account for 38% of all occupational fatalities — nearly 1 in every 3 workplace deaths. In 2024 alone, roadway incidents involving motorised land vehicles claimed 1,146 lives.[1] This is not an Oil & Gas story. It is not a logistics story. It is a universal one.
Road safety is a Serious Injury and Fatality (SIF) risk that cuts across every industry where vehicles, people and logistics intersect — from oil and gas to manufacturing, food and beverage, consumer goods and distribution. Industry data from the International Association of Oil & Gas Producers (IOGP) reinforces this: an analysis of 405 personal-safety fatal incidents identified 45 fatalities directly related to driving.[2] Yet the exposure sits just as heavily on the balance sheets of PepsiCo, FedEx and Caterpillar as it does on any upstream energy operator.
| “The companies that successfully reduce serious road incidents are not those with the longest procedures. They are the ones that focus on SIF risk, simplify expectations, and consistently translate paper requirements into field behaviour.” |
Road Safety Across Industries: What the Data Shows
Large multinational companies across sectors are increasingly treating road transport as a structured operational risk — not a generic health and safety issue. The table below illustrates how Fortune 500 companies across Food & Beverage, Logistics and Manufacturing are responding:
| Company | Sector | Road Safety Exposure / Action | Source |
| PepsiCo | Food & Beverage | ~1.2 billion miles driven annually by company-owned fleet. Multi-layered road safety framework: driver skill, route optimisation, telematics, vehicle maintenance. Member of Together for Safer Roads Coalition. | PepsiCo ESG 2024 |
| Coca-Cola İçecek | Food & Beverage | Route-to-Market road safety programme; safe-driving training, telemetry monitoring, route risk analysis, rear-view cameras across all distribution vehicles, pre-mobilisation field safety inspections. | CCI 2025 Integrated Report |
| Nestlé | Food & Beverage | Global road safety policy covering own fleet and third-party logistics providers. Defensive driving training mandatory for all fleet drivers; telematics monitoring and journey management controls embedded in contractor requirements. | Nestlé ESG 2024 |
| FedEx | Logistics | Video event data recorders (VEDRs) across all delivery vehicles → 19% reduction in accidents per million miles since 2017. Forward Collision Avoidance Mitigation tech → 43% reduction in forward collision accidents since 2018. | FedEx ESG Report 2024 |
| DHL Group | Logistics | Road Safety Programme targets zero road fatalities across own fleet and subcontractors. Driver risk profiling, telematics, e-learning modules, and safe driving incentives deployed across 220+ countries. | DHL Sustainability Report 2024 |
| Amazon | E-commerce | Amazon Delivery Service Partner (DSP) programme includes mandatory road safety standards, in-vehicle camera systems (Netradyne) with AI-based event detection, and weekly driver scorecards. Last-mile fleet covers billions of packages annually. | Amazon Sustainability Report 2024 |
| Alibaba / Cainiao | E-commerce | Road safety requirements embedded in Cainiao logistics partner standards. Telematics and fatigue monitoring systems mandated for long-haul carriers; incident reporting integrated into supplier audits. | Cainiao Sustainability Report 2023 |
| Shell | Oil & Gas | Life-Saving Rules include a dedicated road safety rule (journey management). Mandatory pre-trip risk assessments, driver fitness checks, and speed limiter requirements for all light vehicles and heavy transport. | Shell Sustainability Report 2024 |
| TotalEnergies | Oil & Gas | Golden Rules of Safety include road travel risk management. Journey Management Plans (JMP) required for all field operations; contractor road safety audits part of HSE prequalification. | TotalEnergies Sustainability Report 2024 |
| Caterpillar | Manufacturing | 2030 sustainability goals include a 50% reduction in recordable injury frequency from 2018 baseline. Safety and health is one of only two non-environmental goal categories — road and on-site vehicle risk is a key component. | Caterpillar Sustainability Report 2024 |
| Rio Tinto | Mining | Fatigue and distraction management programme for haul truck and light vehicle operators. Collision avoidance technology (CAT Detect, Hexagon) mandated across open-cut mine sites; road hierarchy and speed zoning enforced. | Rio Tinto Sustainability Report 2024 |
| BHP | Mining | Road transport one of the top fatal risk categories. FATal Risk Controls include mandatory seatbelt use, journey management, fit-for-work verification, and vehicle interaction management at all operated sites. | BHP FY2024 Sustainability Report |
| ArcelorMittal | Heavy Metal / Steel | Road transport identified as a principal fatal risk. Global road safety standards require journey planning, vehicle fitness checks, and prohibition of mobile phone use while driving across all sites and contractor fleets. | ArcelorMittal Sustainability Report 2024 |
| Nucor | Heavy Metal / Steel | Safety culture programme extends to on-road transport of steel products. Driver qualification standards, route pre-approval, and load securement protocols applied to company-operated and contracted carriers. | Nucor Sustainability Report 2023 |
Table 1: Road Safety Exposure and Actions — Selected Fortune 500 Companies
PepsiCo’s company-owned fleet alone travels approximately 1.2 billion miles per year.[3] FedEx’s adoption of Video Event Data Recorders (VEDRs) across its entire pickup and delivery fleet delivered a 19% reduction in accidents per million miles.[4] These are not aspirational commitments — they are measurable outcomes from disciplined road safety management.
Coca-Cola İçecek’s 2025 Integrated Report offers another instructive example. Under its Route-to-Market (RTM) road safety approach, the company describes concrete measures including safe-driving training, telemetry monitoring, route risk analysis, vehicle suitability checks and rear-view cameras across all distribution vehicles — indicating a systematic effort to manage driving risk across the entire distribution network.[5] This illustrates that road exposure is not limited to traditionally high-hazard sectors; it is embedded in any logistics-intensive operation.
Our Approach: A Pragmatic Triplet Model
As SnSD Consultants, within our broader HSE transformation programmes, we treat Road Safety not as a compliance exercise or a procedural refresh, but as a systemic risk management challenge. Our approach is built on international good practice principles applied in a practical and simplified manner — structured around a clear triplet model: Plant, Process and People.
| 🚗 Plant
Vehicle condition, fleet readiness, IVMS/GPS monitoring technologies. Without reliable assets, behavioural and procedural controls lose effectiveness. |
⚙️ Process
Risk-based journey management, pre-mobilisation contractor requirements, daily monitoring embedded in operations — not treated as an afterthought. |
👥 People
Driver competence, fitness to work, intervention culture. Road safety is fundamentally behavioural. Leadership reinforcement and visible accountability are non-negotiable. |
Figure 1: SnSD Road Safety Triplet Model — Plant, Process, People
The ‘Paper to People’ Philosophy
A key differentiator in our transformation work is the application of the “Paper to People” philosophy. In many organisations, road safety requirements are embedded in procedures exceeding one hundred pages. In one of our previous client organisations, the procedure extended to more than 120 pages. In practice, contractors and supervisors struggle to extract what is truly mandatory.
Instead of relying on lengthy documentation, we simplify complex procedural content into concise minimum-resource formats. These clearly communicate what is required in terms of vehicle standards, driver expectations and journey controls, and are shared early in the pre-award phase. Compliance is verified before mobilisation. When expectations are simple and explicit, compliance improves.
| 120-page road safety procedure → One clear minimum-resource format. When you reduce complexity, you raise compliance. |
Behavioural control is further strengthened through simplified Life Saving Rules. Globally, focused and consistently enforced Life Saving Rules are recognised as one of the most effective mechanisms to reduce the probability of a Serious Injury or Fatality. By concentrating on a small number of non-negotiable behaviours, organisations can significantly reduce high-consequence exposure:
- No speeding — drive to the conditions and posted limits
- Seatbelt use — mandatory for driver and all passengers, always
- No driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol
- No mobile phone usage while driving
- Be fit to drive — fatigue and health checks before every journey
Evidence from multiple industries shows that disciplined application of a small set of Life Saving Rules can reduce the probability of SIF events by up to 80 percent.[6] The simplicity is intentional — rules that are memorable get followed.
Digitalisation as an Enabler
Digitalisation has proven to be a powerful enabler across the road safety journey. In the pre-award phase, digital tools allow contractor requirements to be front-loaded and verified systematically. During execution, IVMS and GPS technologies provide real-time visibility of driving behaviour, including speeding and other unsafe patterns.
In one instance, once monitoring was activated for a particular business function, the number of recorded speeding violations initially increased sharply. This did not reflect worsening behaviour — it revealed previously hidden exposure. Visibility is the first step toward control.
FedEx’s experience reinforces this directly: deploying Video Event Data Recorders (VEDRs) across all pickup and delivery vehicles produced a 19% reduction in accidents per million miles since 2017, while requiring Forward Collision Avoidance Mitigation technology on linehaul tractors delivered a 43% reduction in forward-collision accidents since 2018.[4]
Case Study: From Violations to Zero
The following data reflects the outcome of a structured Road Safety intervention implemented within a client organisation.
The client went live with the Road Safety Life-Saving Rules in January, following a six-month pilot phase. During the pilot, the organisation conducted several leadership engagement sessions; drivers were trained on the Life Saving Rules and intervention techniques were reinforced through a dedicated town hall focused on road safety expectations.
When the programme was formally launched in January, violations dropped significantly as monitoring and behavioural expectations became more visible across the organisation. The numbers subsequently stabilised at a level that still indicated ongoing exposure.
Around the seventh month of implementation, violation trends showed a temporary increase, coinciding with the introduction of GPRS-based vehicle speed monitoring, which improved visibility of non-compliant behaviours. In response to this emerging exposure, the CEO issued a leadership communication in December, explicitly reaffirming the non-negotiable expectations under the Road Safety Life Saving Rules.
This intervention acted as a critical inflection point—violations declined sharply following the communication and the downward trend was sustained. By month twelve, violations had reduced to zero.
| A single CEO communication — reaffirming non-negotiable expectations — drove violations down further and sustained the downward trend. By month twelve, recorded violations had reached zero. |
The most important shift was moving Road Safety from a delegated transport topic to a core SIF risk embedded within governance structures. Road Safety was integrated with contractor management, aligned with simplified journey management processes, supported by structured KPIs, reinforced through Life-Saving Rules and enabled by digital monitoring. Most importantly, it was anchored in leadership ownership and practical field implementation.
Conclusion
Road Safety is universal. It affects any organisation where vehicles, people and logistics intersect — whether you operate a refinery in the Middle East, a distribution network in Europe, or a manufacturing plant in the Americas. The data from PepsiCo, FedEx, Coca-Cola İçecek and IOGP all point to the same conclusion: this risk is material, measurable and manageable.
The companies that successfully reduce serious road incidents are not those with the longest procedures. They are the ones that focus on SIF risk, simplify expectations, integrate contractor management, apply a clear set of rules consistently, leverage digital visibility — and translate paper requirements into field behaviour, every day.
| What would it take for your organisation to get to zero? |
References
[1] U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI), 2024.
[2] IOGP Life-Saving Rules — Data Analysis of Reported Fatalities (2008–2017).
[3] PepsiCo ESG Topics A–Z: Environment, Health & Safety (2024), pepsico.com.
[4] FedEx ESG Report 2024 — Fleet Safety & Road Safety Technology section.
[5] Coca-Cola İçecek A.Ş., 2025 Integrated Annual Report.
[6] IOGP / industry evidence on Life Saving Rules and SIF reduction
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