Lawford Kidd, Personal Injury Solicitors

Road safety charity Brake has recently highlighted a number of worrying trends with regards to the safety of the UK’s roads.

The first area of concern for the charity is the number of deaths and serious injuries that are still occurring on the roads as a result of drink driving. Government figures show that in 2013, 240 people were killed by drivers over the legal drink drive limit, and provisional estimates for 2014 suggest that a similar number lost their lives last year as well.

The profile of Britain’s illegal drink drivers has apparently remained largely the same:

The skipper of a shellfish fishing boat has been sentenced for serious safety failings after the death of a diver in the River Forth Estuary.

Graeme Mackie was working as a scuba diver to collect shellfish from Ronald John MacNeil’s boat the “Rob Roy” when the incident occurred in June 2011.

Dunfermline Sheriff Court heard that Mr Mackie had entered the water for his first dive, around 600 metres south of Methil Harbour, but re-surfaced a minute later waving in obvious distress before disappearing again under the water.

The Legionnaires' disease outbreak in summer 2012 was a worrying time for Edinburgh residents, mainly due to the lack of information given by local authorities at the time. Four people died and there were 56 confirmed cases, making it the worst Legionnaires' outbreak in a decade.

NHS Lothian's Incident Management Team published a report into the incident this week, which said that since the outbreak, 'the City of Edinburgh Council's Food Health and Safety Service has enhanced its ability to inspect risk systems and its capability to respond to Legionella outbreaks'.

The NHS Lothian Report

Neither the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) nor the Incident Management Team at NHS Lothian have been able to identify the source of the outbreak. The NHS summarised the outcome of the investigation as follows:

A man has died after he suffered severe burns following an industrial accident at a sewage treatment works.

The incident which occurred in Yorkshire highlights the dangers of working in such an environment,  with industrial accidents in areas such as waste management and other types of work increasing according to provisional figures from the Health and Safety Executive.

Mick Jennings had worked for Yorkshire Water for eight years as a mechanical fitter in an engineering team and had a significant amount of training.

New regulations, which aim to cut the risks for those workers/employees involved in offshore installations or similar activities but also safeguard the environment as well as costal economies, came into effect on 19 July 2015.

The Offshore Installations (Offshore Safety Directive) (Safety Case etc) Regulations 2015 – otherwise known as "SCR 2015" – now apply to all oil and gas operations, which take place in UK waters.