A cyclist who was the victim of a terrifying road rage ordeal by a FedEx driver has accused the company of dismissing his concerns because his blog was not deemed high profile enough, after an internal email conversation discussing the incident – which happened days after a FedEx driver was filmed driving apparently asleep at the wheel – was accidentally forwarded to him by a FedEx Managing Director.
James Avery, who cycles regularly in London, says he was too scared to get back on his bike for five months after a driver in a FedEx branded van drove aggressively at him near Kings Cross station last August, an act he described as “terrorism”.
Avery chased FedEx for safety procedure and driver training information for more than three months before the company claimed it had investigated the issue, without answering specific questions.
Road.cc also contacted FedEx about the incident at the time, to which they provided a general statement.
Cycling UK says the company’s failure to respond to Avery’s questions, in effect dismissing his concerns and hoping they will go away, disregards corporate responsibility. They say the company should, in such circumstances, examine its driver training systems and the time pressures placed on drivers. FedEx has not responded to further requests from road.cc for safety procedure information.
FedEx provided a statement to road.cc on 24 August simply saying they hold their drivers to “stringent standards” and were investigating the matter, after which Avery continued to chase the company with ten questions* on safety procedures, from driver targets to training. When FedEx responded to Avery on 20 January, after five months of chasing, its Customer Services Managing Director, William Martin, claims “the matter was fully investigated and the appropriate action taken.
However, Martin had accidentally forwarded an internal email conversation to Avery dating back to August, in which company staff decide not to answer road.cc’s and Avery’s questions on driver training because one or both were deemed “specialist website/not high engagement/very few comments”.
The conversation began with an email from road.cc journalist, Laura Laker, to FedEx on August 21 2016, following the incident, asking what training its drivers are given regarding vulnerable road users, and what action the company planned to take following the ordeal, which left Avery in shock and too afraid to cycle on the roads.
At the time Avery told road.cc: “It is very clear that this thug wanted nothing other than to intimidate. His actions were highly intimidatory, and they have achieved the desired effect of making me too scared to go out.”
The accidentally forwarded emails reveal what was discussed between the road.cc email and FedEx’s most recent response to Avery in January – and how the company decided not to disclose its safety procedures based on readership of those requesting the information, even though this appeared to have been the second major safety lapse that week, following what they describe as a “sleeping driver issue”.
Just days earlier a FedEx driver, who had apparently fallen asleep at the wheel was caught on camera driving on the wrong side of the road, narrowly missing an oncoming car.
Read more of the original article at road.cc.
