How can you manage vehicle safety during fieldwork and expeditions?

July 28, 2011 - PRLog -- Vehicles and road safety are probably the biggest factor in managing safe expeditions and overseas fieldwork and adventure travel.  Sadly a number of events in recent years have shown there where we experience tragic losses of life of travellers and young people overseas it often relates to road traffic incidents.  However it can be extremely difficult to manage this successfully when working in remote regions of the world where driving and vehicle standards may be very different to those we might expect in the UK.
In response to this issue UK expedition and travel safety company Fieldskills are working with the Royal Geographical Society with IBG in London to run a new course on vehicle safety.

Traditional tour leader and expedition training tends to focus on core skills such as navigation, first aid and emergency response. Whilst those skills are absolutely vital it is clearly part of the role of overseas staff and leaders to also do all they can to avoid accidents and incidents in the field - a major part of this is the dynamic assessment of risk. Many leaders have extensive experience of paper based and dynamic risk management of traditional outdoors areas but very little when it comes to other issues such as vehicle safety. This is in contrast to incident statistics which show most major incidents on overseas trips have revolved around vehicles.
Therefore it is vital to give staff the abilities to assess and manage vehicle safety. The course will look at how pre-planning and dynamic field assessment can allow us to recognise and minimise these risks.

The course is targeted at expedition managers and field management staff, University staff running fieldwork or supervising others around the world.  It will also be appropriate for expedition leaders and tour organisers, travellers, teachers and other individuals involved in fieldwork or expeditions.

It is designed to give people practical solutions to some of the issues they may face – to look at what can we do in advance of the trip - pre trip agreements, vehicle standards and license checks.  It will look at applying these theories in the field - what vehicle checks and assessment can we do to make sure our pre-planning expectations have been met - or to assess additional vehicles where no prior planning or assessment is possible.  Finally it will look at those tricky questions of what is an 'acceptable standard' - vehicle standards are varied around the world - what is legal and what isn't? And just because it may be legal – does it mean it is acceptable?

To find out more you can see the http://www.fieldskills.com/A-4Expedition%20training/Exped... or book through the Royal Geographical Society.

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Fieldskills: First Aid, Expedition, Fieldwork & Travel Safety Training for individuals, expedition companies, universities, fieldworkers & businesses. We use our heritage in outdoor pursuits & expeditions to help others complete safe & successful ventures