Managing health and safety at Formula-1 events

This article describes the main risks at Formula-1 and other motorsport events and some of the steps that can safeguard the health and safety of employees, volunteers and spectators.?

As an employer, you will have a general duty to ensure, so far as reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare of your employees. You also have a duty to make sure, so far as reasonably practicable, that volunteers, spectators and others including the media are not exposed to risks to their health and safety arising from the operation of your event.

If you are an employer, describing how you will manage health and safety will let your officials, marshals and others know about your commitment to keeping people safe. Whatever the scale of the event, make sure there is a clear understanding within the organizing team about who will be responsible for safety matters. For employers, this is likely to be driven by the organizer's health and safety policy, which should clearly say who does what, when and how.

Not everyone will need a management system, but it can help you demonstrate you are meeting your duties.

Planning your event

As an event organizer, identify the:

• ?scale, type and scope of the event;
• ?number of participants and spectators (including the media);
• ?location and duration of the event;
• ?time of day and year the event will be held (as the weather may be a significant
• factor).

These key factors will help you to determine what facilities and resources will be required, eg the design of the track, number and type of barriers, plus the number of marshals and officials needed.

Once you’ve identified the nature and scope of your event, you should create an event safety plan based on an assessment of the risks.

Assessing the risks

As part of managing health and safety at your event, you must assess and control the risks. To do this you need to think about what might cause harm to people, eg your employees, volunteers, participants and spectators, and decide whether you are doing enough to prevent harm. This process is known as risk assessment and it is something duty holders are required by law to carry out.

A risk assessment is about identifying and taking sensible and proportionate measures to control the risks at your event, not about creating huge amounts of paperwork. For those of you who organize events on a regular basis, you are probably already taking steps to protect your employees, volunteers, spectators and others, but your risk assessment will help you decide whether you should be doing more.

Be aware that the safety precautions for motorsport events will vary widely according to the discipline. For example, a large car race meeting held at a permanent racetrack will have different requirements to those for a motorcycle trial on a stretch of moorland, but the same basic principles will apply.

Think about how accidents and ill health could happen and concentrate on real risks – those that are most likely and which will cause the most harm. The following might help. ?

• Think about your event activities, processes and any substances used that could either injure your team, spectators and others or harm their health. ?
• Ask your team what they think the hazards are as they may notice things that are not obvious to you, and may have some good ideas on how to control the risks.
• Speaking to other event organizers in your discipline can also be helpful.
• ?Read the Health and safety topics section in this guide.
• Check the guidance produced by your sport’s governing body and manufacturers’ instructions or data sheets for chemicals and equipment as they can be very helpful in spelling out the hazards and ways of controlling risk.
• Recognize that some employees may have particular requirements, eg new and young workers, migrant workers, new or expectant mothers, people with disabilities, temporary workers, contractors and lone workers may be at particular risk.

Liaise with others, eg the venue owner/track operator, emergency services and officials from your sport’s governing body, for advice and information relevant to your planning. Discuss with them how you can control risks.?If you are planning to hold an event at a permanent venue, eg a circuit, you should liaise with the site operator, who is usually responsible for the safety of the track, barriers, spectator facilities, car parks etc.?If the event is to take place on a temporary site such as a field you, as the organizer, will be responsible for deciding what safety precautions are necessary. The owner of the land is usually responsible only for advising organizers of hazards which are to do with the land, such as buried or overhead electrical cables.?If your event takes place on Forestry Commission land, they have their own arrangements in place for motorsport events such as car rallies and motorbike events.?Don’t forget safety precautions for practice or test sessions – marshals and first-aid cover are usually required for these as well.

Having identified the hazards, you then have to decide how likely it is that harm will occur. Risk is a part of everyday life and you are not expected to eliminate all risks. What you must do is make sure you know about the main risks and the things you need to do to manage them responsibly. Generally, you need to do everything reasonably practicable to protect people from harm. Make a record of your significant findings – the hazards, how people might be harmed by them and what you have in place to control the risks. Share this with your team.?If you have fewer than five employees you do not have to write anything down about your risk assessment, but it is useful to do this so you can review it at a later date, for example if something changes. Few events are the same, so it makes sense to review what you are doing on an ongoing basis.??

Incidents and emergencies??

Your event safety plan should also include plans to respond effectively to accidents and other emergencies that might occur at your event. Plans should be in proportion to the level of risk presented by event activities and the potential extent and severity of the incident. For example, at events like rallies, spectators and marshals often get involved in assisting competing vehicles back onto the track. In doing so, they put themselves at risk of injury while helping, or being run over by a following vehicle/s. Consider how you will manage this risk when drawing up your plan.?You will also need to consider your response to serious emergencies, including major incidents that will require the help of the emergency services and implementation of their regional emergency plans (which may not be specific to your event). For all but the smallest events with low risks (or those in fixed venues with established emergency procedures), draw up and discuss your plans with the police, fire and rescue service, ambulance service, the local authority and, for permanent venues, the site operator.?The detail and complexity of any discussions should be proportionate to the risks involved. The organizer, venue operator and the emergency services should be clear about who will do what if there is an emergency or major incident, eg where the access routes and rendezvous points for emergency vehicles will be or how any first-aid and rescue services already on-site will be used.

Develop an emergency plan

Most event emergency plans should address the same basic requirements, to:

• protect spectators, participants and marshals from immediate danger;
• ?summon and assist emergency services;
• ?handle casualties;
• ?deal with the non-injured, eg spectators and other participants;
• ?liaise with the emergency services and other authorities and, where the
• situation is serious, hand over responsibility for the incident/emergency;
• ?protect property.

Emergency procedures

Procedures for officials and marshals to follow in an emergency should include:

• raising the alarm;
• ?warning participating vehicles (you may need to suspend the event or part of
• the event according to the situation);
• ?protecting and informing spectators;
• ?on-site emergency response, ie use of fire extinguishers and rescue equipment;
• ?summoning the emergency services;
• ?spectator management, including evacuation where necessary;
• ?evacuation of people with disabilities;
• ?traffic management, including emergency vehicles and safety cars;
• ?incident control;
• ?liaison with emergency services;
• ?providing first aid and medical assistance.?

Make sure that all relevant event personnel, no matter what their normal working role, understand what they should do in an emergency, eg know the location of exits and emergency equipment, how to raise the alarm or warn participating vehicles, and whose instructions they should follow. For larger-scale events it may be useful to have a training exercise to allow those involved to practice their roles.?Appoint people to implement your emergency procedures.?

Managing the event

Once the event begins, attention should move away from planning to the effective management and monitoring of site operations. Ensure co-operation and proper co-ordination of all work activities on the site. This does not mean you become responsible for all the individual technical work carried out by third parties. Rather you should make sure you develop a safe overall programmed of work and communicate this to all relevant parties.??In addition to your emergency procedure you should provide your event team, including volunteer marshals and any media, with relevant information on potential risks to their health and safety identified by your risk assessment and details of any other safety arrangement for spectators and participants. You could do this as part of a briefing about individual work activities or tasks. For example, you may need to tell people about:

• site hazards and control measures for prohibited areas and spectator viewing
• areas;
• ?safe speed limits in the paddock and service areas;
• ?where they can park safely and the procedures for vehicles leaving/blocking the
• course;
• ?first aid, toilets and wash facilities;?
• ?communication systems, eg radios;
• ?procedures for using/booking out plant and equipment.

It may also be necessary to provide relevant health and safety information to participants and spectators, eg in the form of warning notices to advise spectators?of prohibited areas and/or a driver/rider briefing to make sure that they understand the various flag or light signals to be used.?

Competence of event personnel

Everyone who works for you should know how to work safely and without risks to their health. There should also be an appropriate level of competent supervision, proportionate to the risk, nature of the work and the personnel involved. For example, marshals with a responsibility to manage prohibited areas and/or operate rescue equipment should be competent to do so. Practice may be required to remain competent. Many of the motorsport governing bodies and local emergency services organize training and license marshals and officials.

Pre-event checks, monitoring and review of safety performance

Before racing starts, officials should inspect the track, stage or course and any barriers to make sure they are in a safe condition. It is vital that officials also check to ensure that measures designed to keep spectators away from prohibited areas are in place and that spectators are not in a position where they could be injured by a participant’s vehicle. Also make sure that all officials, marshals, first-aid, fire and rescue services are in place and communications systems are working. You should periodically check your methods for controlling risks during your event to make sure they are working and being followed. Your risk assessment should set out the frequency of checks, who is responsible for them and the methods they use.?For larger events, a number of people may share the monitoring role. Whoever has the role should be familiar with the risk assessment findings and control measures, and be able to identify new hazards and assess risks as they arise on the day.

Reporting accidents and incidents??

All employers and people in control of work premises have duties under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR). However, most sporting accidents are not reportable, eg if a rider makes an error and falls off a motocross bike and injures themselves because they went too fast, it would not be reportable.?To be reportable the accident must?arise?‘out of or in connection with work’. So, if the accident arose from maintenance?of the track or barriers, or failings in the organization or management of the event it would be reportable.??The reports made under RIDDOR are separate to any which might be required by motorsport governing bodies or for insurance purposes.

Action to take in the event of a death?

Although they are rare, deaths do sometimes occur. If someone is killed, you should inform the coroner, or in the local procurator fiscal, immediately. You can do this by contacting any police officer. You should not disturb the scene of the accident. The police, local authority and/or HSE will want to carry out an investigation to determine the causes of the accident and whether there has been a breach of any legislation.

Spectator safety?

Be proportionate in your approach to managing spectators. Tailor your safety measures to the number and type of spectators you expect and to the layout of the venue. For example, a championship motocross event is likely to attract more spectators than a small club-organized meeting and so may require more in the way of management. Previous attendance figures and experience should help you to plan your approach.?As explained in the previous section, spectator safety should be a key consideration in the design of any course, stage or track layout. During the route planning stage of your event, consider the types and positioning of barriers, any prohibited areas and other arrangements needed to protect spectators. Designated spectator viewing areas, using high ground, can help to reduce risks. Your sport’s governing body should be able to advise you on the technical standards expected. Also make sure that there are enough entrances and exits to the venue and that they are big enough to allow people to leave quickly if there is an emergency. Remember to consider people with disabilities when deciding the appropriate action to take. If you are expecting people to use their own cars to travel to the event, arrange for adequate parking and for parking areas to be well signposted or for car parking stewards to be available to direct drivers to parking spaces. Make sure that any areas where parking could cause a hazard are cordoned off.?Provide spectators with suitable and sufficient information to help ensure their health and safety. For example, it can help to provide visitors with information on tickets, websites etc. about the risks associated with motorsport, to have an appropriate number of signposts and/or stewards wearing tabards on the day to direct people to safe walkways and viewing areas, and to prevent people from entering prohibited areas.?

Officials may also need to communicate with spectators, particularly if there is an incident or emergency. If you plan to use a public address system or loud hailer it is important that all spectators can hear it.??Take reasonable steps to make sure pathways and walkways stay free from slip and trip hazards such as waste material.?Monitor the safety of spectators during the event. For example, you could use safety cars, CCTV and/or marshals/stewards. Monitoring will allow you to take action quickly to prevent overcrowding that is likely to cause injury and to deal with anyone that may have moved into a dangerous position along the route.

Pit/paddock and service area safety?

Key hazards in the pit, paddock and vehicle service areas can include moving vehicles and the presence of fuel. To reduce the risk of pedestrians being injured by a moving vehicle in the pit/ paddock or service area, take steps to ensure that both can circulate safely. Have a traffic management system in place incorporating one-way systems, where possible, to minimize the need for reversing. You could decide that the most appropriate action is to use marshals to control the movement of vehicles and pedestrians and impose a speed limit. You may decide to allow the public to enter the pit/paddock or service area to talk to drivers/riders and view their vehicles. To reduce the risk of injury to spectators you may need to limit the number of people admitted and the areas or times at which they can enter, eg when large numbers of vehicles are moving or when vehicles are being refuelled.

Use and storage of fuel?

Fuel is a fire and explosion hazard and it should be stored and handled properly. You should have a system of safety precautions to deal with incidents which might occur when refuelling is taking place or where fuel is being stored.?At most small events, individual participants bring their own fuel in small containers. You should advise participants that fuel should be brought in containers that are suitable for that purpose and, to help with identification, they should be appropriately marked. For petrol, containers should be marked with the words ‘petrol’ and ‘highly flammable’.

Where large quantities of fuel are involved, make sure that you site fire-fighting equipment and competent users around the track or throughout the course and in the pit, paddock or vehicle service areas. Service and inspect the equipment regularly and ensure that it is only used and refilled by people who have been appropriately trained.?Refueling should, if possible, be carried out away from spectators in a designated area in the open air. If it takes place indoors, the area should be adequately ventilated and away from sources of ignition such as hot surfaces or sparks produced by tools. It is essential that the areas where fuel is handled are kept clean and free from rubbish. Appropriate fire-fighting equipment should be maintained in such areas and refuelling personnel competent to use it.?If you store a large amount of petrol or dispense it directly into the fuel tank of a vehicle you should consider if the Petroleum (Consolidation) Regulations 2014 apply. If the Regulations apply you may need a petrol storage certificate or licence and you should contact your local petroleum enforcement authority (PEA) for advice. PEAs are generally situated within trading standards or environmental health departments of local authorities. In Azerbaijan and metropolitan boroughs, the responsibility falls to the local fire and rescue service.