Posted By Jason McQueen I was just wondering if anyone knew the approach super markets take in providing segregation of vehicle and pedestrian routes? Most of us have to provide clearly defined pedestrian routes that keep people away from moving vehicles (where ever possible) but clearly supermarkets dont do the same as you have to walk across the car park to get to the store which brings you into contact with other moving vehicles.

Posted By Brett Day Limited they did do a lot with one particular supermarket chain who approached them after a couple of deaths, but that was in the service yards relating to truck movements. As for the customer's side haven't seen much, mind you local planning departments are an absolute pain when it come to this sort of thing, if it might alter the car park layout or 'feel' of the development (haven't a clue what it means, no-one in the planning dept could explain it to me). I did have a project where the roof had a two foot parapet (just right for tripping over) on the roof in the planning drawings, realised his mistake and changed it to a four foot high parapet, planning department rejected it as it would spoil the asthetics of the building, what on a three storey development. Would make life eaiser if planners worked to CDM or were at least aware of it !!

Posted By Salus Super markets have done "as much as is reasonably practicable" they are managing the risk not getting rid of them all.

Posted By Jerry Lucey Goodmorning Jason, having worked in transport and food safety the onus was on the party providing a public service/ product that posed a risk to public health to prove 'due diligence'. I would have thought that in the event of an accident the onus would be on the supermarket to prove 'due diligence' where a member of the public was injured. It is my understanding that proving 'due diligence' is more difficult than 'reasonably practicable' which is what you would have to prove in relation to your particular situation if you are not providing a service where the public has to enter your premises. In your particular situation you need to prove that you have done all that is reasonably practicable i.e. if a risk is reasonably foreseeable, appropriate measures need to be implemented to lower the risk to as low as is reasonably practicable. Getting back to your original question, I would think that due diligence would be extremely difficult to prove where a risk assessment does not exist and measures implemented to segregate pedestrians and vehicles. Design Teams could also find themselves in a situation where they would be liable for not taking the needs of the end user into consideration during design.