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Safety on the road

Our staff and contractors drove around 1.1 billion km in 2012 to deliver products and run our operations, equivalent to 75 times around the world every day. Many of these journeys took place in countries with some of the world’s most hazardous roads. We work to improve the safety of our drivers and to help build more awareness of road safety in countries where we operate. We enforce our global road safety standards, minimise journeys, and hold training and awareness programmes. In 2012, the number of road safety incidents involving fatality, injury or a vehicle rolling over was down by more than 30% on the year before.

Our Life-Saving Rules include key steps to improve road safety: drivers must follow an agreed journey plan, wear seat belts, not use mobile phones and stay within speed limits.

In Iraq, road traffic accidents are a leading cause of fatalities. Drivers working on the Shell-operated Majnoon project have been trained in techniques to stay safe. These include checking whether cars are roadworthy, planning journeys properly, and driving defensively to avoid danger, for example by staying a safe distance from other vehicles. Around 1,300 local drivers had taken this training by the end of 2012.

We have been installing in-vehicle monitoring systems in our trucks since 2005. These systems record information about a driver’s behaviour including speeding, harsh braking and acceleration, which is then used to improve safe driving skills. Our global training includes defensive driving and how to secure loads, avoid tiredness and prevent vehicles rolling over.

To help reduce the number of road incidents globally we work with business, governments and partnerships to support community programmes. We also work with international agencies and are a sponsor of the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety. We chair and partly fund the Global Road Safety Initiative, a long-term programme to improve road safety in Brazil, China and countries in south-east Asia.