BJC HSE's remit is about promoting/enforcing compliance with occupational safety and health legislation at workplaces and during work activities. Therefore, why do you think it should somehow deal with potholes, road markings and other aspects relating to the condition of public highways? The web page you quoted was about a prosecution pursued by HSE regarding a high risk WORK activity on a public highway. It summarised how a member of the public died in Glasgow because reasonably practicable precautions hadn't been taken to ensure the safe reversing of a recyclables collection lorry. Sadly the Glasgow death was another to add to a long litany of deaths stemming from unguided "blind" reversing of lorries in different parts of the UK over many years. Also, your use of the initials RTA (road traffic accident) for your thread title prompts me to add a recollection that HSE or some of its inspectors were criticised during the 1990s for regarding injuries and deaths caused by unsafe work activities on public highways (e.g. unsafe crossing of public roads by fork lift trucks, unguided reversing of refuse lorries) as RTAs and therefore for investigation (and any appropriate enforcement action) by the police rather than HSE. I think the criticism led to confirmation that HSE did have responsibility for investigation and enforcement of incidents on highways which had a significant occupational element. As my memory may be incorrect, do any other forum users have recollections similar to mine? Your mention of potholes above seemed slightly familiar and prompted me to use the forum search facility and find that you've previously made a number of postings on this forum regarding HSE and highway potholes, etc. Furthermore, some forum users responded to them with the view that it's wholly inappropriate to expect HSE to invoke section 3 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 against highway authorities regarding potholes and other highway deficiencies. I guess that most of us who drive and/or cycle would agree that some roads in the UK are not being maintained as they should (as regards frequency and/or standard and, in some cases, no maintenance whatsoever). However, probably few would agree with your apparent expectation/agenda that HSE has responsibility for compelling highway authorities to maintain highways to appropriate standards. HSE's remit regarding highways is surely limited to HOW highway maintenance work is carried out with regard to the safety and health of people who are either doing the work or might be at risk from it as members of the public !

Graham You are perfectly correct in remembering HSE having to get involved in road traffic accidents where there was a definite link to the management of the fleet of vehicles and staff. They would be asked to do this by the police who would have started the investigation and realised that whilst they could prosecute the driver under the Road Traffic Acts the real fault lay with the management of the company and only HSE could bring such prosecutions. It was a wake up call to the many firms that tried to rely on the old adage of 'it is the drivers responsibility'. Take care John C