3M United Kingdom Plc.

 
3M's commitment to the European Road Safety Charter is a continuation of our responsibility to our employees and our corporate responsibility agenda relating to road safety. We commit to the following actions for the next three years:
 
1. 3M provides a 'defensive driving' training course for its 800 company car drivers. A combination of desk based training and practical assessment in the driver's vehicle help them to better understand their own attitudes to driving, and enable them to identify and address areas of poor practice, reducing the risk of a crash. Training is repeated every four years with an average c. 180 drivers completing it each year.
 
2. Child road safety is the main focus of 3M's community programme in the UK and Ireland and will remain a commitment.
 
3M Streetwise - www.3Mstreetwise.co.uk - is a web based road safety teaching resource, which forms part of our child road safety actions and commitment.
3M Streetwise was designed to supply road safety information to school teachers and pupils to support the teaching of road safety in both Personal Social and Health Education and Science lessons for 7-11 year olds.
 
From our experience of the site's performance we anticipate the continued development and interest in this programme over the next three years with the following objectives - a further:
- 250,000 web visits
- 1.5 million page views
- 13,000 teacher registrations
- 60,000 PDFs (lesson plans, class worksheets, homework sheets, etc.) downloaded.
 
We aim to attract interest from all 7-11 year-old children in the UK's 22,000 primary schools.
 
3. 3M believes there to be evidence that using hands-free phones affects various aspects of driving performance. Our employees' welfare and safety is of paramount importance to 3M - we are enforcing a ban on our employees' use of mobile phones while driving, even hands-free, unless their cars are stationary with the handbrake on. This decision follows advice from leading safety advisers such as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA).
 
The enforcement of this ban has several elements, a) corporate communication of policy, b) through education, repetition and reinforcement to our employees with the emphasis on our commitment to health & safety and corporate responsibility, c) monitoring of employee attitudes to the ban via annual surveys.
 
Recognising the business interest this move is attracting, we commit to playing an active role in industry debates on the issue of hands free equipment and sharing with other organisations our experience of having implemented such a ban.
 
To this end 3M conducted a national driver distraction survey in late 2008 and will host an industry workshop in collaboration with Brake, the road safety charity, in 2009 where the issue will be debated with experts such as TRL, the UK's leading transport research laboratory.
 
3M has also agreed to become a 'company champion' for the Driving for Better Business campaign which is run by Roadsafe, a road safety partnership of leading companies in the motor and transport Industries in Britain, the Government and road safety professionals.
 
4. We will continue to fund an education in science theatre company to visit primary schools with a play about road safety.