One of the most common causes of injury (and subsequent personal injury claim) in the coach industry is drivers handling luggage. Sprains, stains, pulled muscles and more serious injuries, such as fractures and hernias, can be caused by loading heavy or awkward items of passengers’ luggage.
Employers have a legal responsibility to ensure that drivers are adequately trained under basic health & safety legislation and also specific manual handling regulations. Failure to have carried out training (with a signed training record) can lead to both expensive settlements in claims from employees and possible prosecution by the HSE. Minimise Your Risk, in association with ‘Scriptographic’ publications, has produced a new manual handling booklet for coach drivers loading luggage entitled ‘Handling luggage – reducing the risk of injury’ This easy to read booklet has received the ‘Crystal mark’ for clarity from the Plain English Campaign. Whilst issuing the booklet cannot on its own be considered to be ‘suitable and sufficient’ training, linked to classroom and practical training it has an invaluable part to play in operators covering themselves for ‘compliance’. Importantly, the last page of the booklet has a ‘test of knowledge’ which is removed after training and to be kept on the driver’s staff file as signed evidence of training. This is essential for defense of any claims from ‘no win/no fee’ solicitors – signed evidence of training is a standard request under pre-action protocol.
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