Chain of Responsibility is a system of making an organisation as a whole responsible for safety, and not just those at the coalface.

The need can be illustrated in transport industries.

Truck drivers, especially self-employed ones, can be given unrealistic deadlines to meet, and they may speed and pop pills with inadequate care for safety in order to meet those deadlines. There needs to be a so-called "Chain of Responsibility" to bring supervisors and management into the safety loop, and not leave it all to the man at the coalface.

Under the Chain of Responsibilty system, a dispatcher would be limited to giving the driver a realistic deadline for a load, obeying all the speed limits along the way, allow for traffic congestion at the relevant times of day, and including time for meal and rest breaks. A dispatcher who issued an unrealistic deadline would be committing an offense, especially if an accident occurred.

See Also

• Quintinshill Rail Disaster.