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Welcome to Driven By Excellence, your trusted place for all things logistics and road safety from PDT Fleet Training. Each month, join host Hattie Hlad as she interviews experts on a wide range of topics within the logistics field.
[00:00:00] Hattie Hlad: Driven by Excellence, your trusted place for all things logistics and road safety. Today, as promised and backed by popular demand, we welcome Olly Tayler, former Sergeant for Roads Policing. On our very first episode of Driven by Excellence, we welcomed Olly into our studio to share his first hand experience of road policing in the UK.
We know that generally people have the perspective that it will never happen to me, and if you haven't already, please go check out our road safety messages on pdtfleettrainingsolutions.co.uk. You'll hear Olly talk openly about some of the most horrendous road traffic collisions he's attended in his long spanning career in policing, the message being that it could indeed happen to any one of us.
Today we wanted to cast the net wider and ask Olly to talk through those areas that may not be at the forefront of our minds when considering the victims of serious and fatal collisions that happens on our roads. A bit like throwing a stone into a pond, the ripple effect is far reaching, so today we're going to unpack that with Olly and hopefully us and you, the listeners, will gain a new perspective of the effects on those at the front line of response. Olly, thanks so much for returning to the studio with us.
[00:01:15] Olly Tayler: You're welcome.
[00:01:16] Hattie Hlad: Let's get straight into it. For many of us, our first thought when thinking about a road traffic collision is the driver or the loved ones of those individuals. But when we think about it logically, of course others involved are affected, so let's start there if we can.
Can I ask you to explain the issues created with repeated exposure to traumatic events for those serving in Blue Light duties?
[00:01:37] Olly Tayler: Now, absolutely, now I think it's really important to reiterate that actually those that are directly involved and affected by serious and fatal collisions, you're talking about families, you're talking about loved ones, you're talking about friends, communities, that should never be underestimated and those effects will last a lifetime and you know, I've met families years later that the impact of what's happened to their loved ones is still as raw then as it was maybe, you know, 10, 12, 15 years earlier. So that's really important to remember. However, obviously today we're talking about the wider impact of collisions like that, particularly on the Blue Light services, but also not forgetting people who maybe have witnessed these incidents, who've tried to help out before emergency services arrive, they can again have quite long lasting impacts on people. Now a lot of that's to do with actually that may be one of only a handful of traumatic incidents that an average person, if you want to call them that, will experience throughout their lifetime and a study was done a few years ago where it showed that the average person will experience trauma maybe three or four times during a lifetime. Now you then take Blue Light services and the study was done with police officers and paramedics and it showed that over a 30 year career that your average police officer, average paramedic, will experience and be exposed to traumatic events between five and six hundred times over that 30 year career, which is unbelievable and all that trauma, it has to be dealt with somehow. So it's all about trying to deal with the trauma that Blue Light Services face. The study was done with paramedics and police officers, but that doesn't preclude fire officers, air ambulance staff, people like that. So anybody that's really your first responders, your frontline first responders, the ones who not only attend and deal with these incidents from the outset, But thinking about hospital staff, those in maybe A&E departments who fight to save people's lives when they're brought into hospital, to hospital staff trying to save people in wards, trying to rehabilitate people and all those bits and pieces in between.
So when you look at it, the net's cast really wide, and I think a lot of occasions is people tend to forget about those forgotten victims if you like, the ones that people don't really think about. So it's all about how those Blue Light services manage when they're faced with repeated trauma as many, you know, of my former colleagues have been and still are and over 30 years I certainly was.
[00:04:17] Hattie Hlad: Do you think that maybe we as the public forget to see behind the uniform and remember that there is a human with thoughts and feelings who are susceptible to trauma? With that Olly, how do you and those involved in Blue Light services?
[00:04:33] Olly Tayler: I think that's a really good point Hattie in that people do tend to think that we're just machines and that, you know, we go out and we deal with these things day in day out and that there isn't a human behind it but there absolutely is. Many of us have, we have families, we have, you know, children of our own, partners at home and we are just as susceptible to those feelings and, you know, the stresses that anybody else encounters in their day to day life, but we have to be able to manage those, we have to find ways to manage them because otherwise we become really ineffective at our jobs.
[00:05:08] Hattie Hlad: With that, how do you think we could be better as the public to support you?
[00:05:12] Olly Tayler: I think it's really to try and have an understanding that I've been to countless scenes where members of the public not involved, maybe at a road closure, something like that, have become really anti towards you know, myself, colleagues, people who are, you know, just sort of staffing things like road closures, particularly that springs to mind because, you know, it's, inconveniencing somebody and you know, somebody's been inconvenienced because the road's closed and they have to go on a diversion, they, you know, get home late, whatever it might be. But actually what they tend to lose sight of is the fact that road's closed for a really good reason. That there's, you know, further down the road, they probably can't even see what's going on, you know, it might be, you know, a mile down the road, actually, there are Blue Light services, there are people working at a scene, desperately trying to save someone's life, trying to investigate what's happened and actually, what they should do is really just stop and take a deep breath and think, actually, that could be a relative of mine, it could be a friend of mine and if that was the case, would I want the Blue Light services to be doing absolutely everything they could one to save life and two to investigate what's happened and they don't think that they think you know well i'm being inconvenienced you know and it's all your fault so i'm going to take my anger out on you as an individual. Well, we're still people at the end of the day we're still... we're not superhuman you know we don't wear capes we haven't got suits of armor that protect us from these things we just have to get on with it and deal with it so just really just take a moment just to think about actually, what are these people dealing with? What are they facing? You know, what are they seeing? What are they hearing? Maybe actually my life isn't quite so bad and I should just take a moment to just think about, well, it might inconvenience me and I might be half an hour late home or, you know, I might miss an appointment. Well, actually, that's not the end of the world.
[00:07:00] Hattie Hlad: Yeah, it's about the bigger picture.
[00:07:01] Olly Tayler: Oh, absolutely.
[00:07:03] Hattie Hlad: How would you explain the feelings in the moment of dealing with the fatal road traffic collision and then how do those feelings change over time?
[00:07:11] Olly Tayler: That's, really interesting and I can really only talk from my own experience because everybody deals with these things differently. So from myself, when I arrive at a scene is I know that I've got a job to do. So, there are people, as a lead investigator, or former lead investigator for fatal and serious collisions, I had a role to perform and the way that I dealt with the immediacy of it, and often it's not when you get a call to attend a scene, you don't really know what you're going to be going into. You might get some details, you might get a bit of a picture emerging, but you don't really know what you're gonna have to deal with until you actually arrive and you've got that scene laid out in front of you to be able to then start to manage.
So it might sound a little bit cold and clinical, but the way I look at it was that by the time I got the call to attend the scene, that job had happened, that collision had happened. There was absolutely nothing I could do to change that. So all I could do was to go and do the very best that I could do as a lead investigator to investigate the circumstances of what happened to ultimately answer the two questions that loved ones will always ask which is what happened and why did it happen and it's only right and proper that those questions are answered. But also if somebody has committed an offence. If as a result of their actions, their decision making has led to someone else in the road losing their life, then it's important that they face justice for that as well. So, in the immediacy of a job, in those first few hours, I couldn't let emotion cloud my judgment.
[00:09:01] Hattie Hlad: Interesting.
[00:09:02] Olly Tayler: I had to become quite clinical. I had to become very detached from what I was dealing with to make sure that I was effective and that I made sure that professionalism was absolutely the core of every decision I made, and that I couldn't let those emotions, however strong those emotions may have been when you look at particular scenes that I've dealt with over the years, but I had to make sure that, all the evidence was gathered, all the witnesses were identified, that thinking about where I could be stood in 18 months, two years time, you know, potentially a crown court or a coroner's court, wherever it may be, potentially answering some fairly awkward questions about an investigation I'd done 18 months, two years before. So it was just a case of going, right, this is a job at the end of the day. Yes, there are people at the end of it. Yes, there are loved ones, there are families at the end of it. But if I let emotion cloud my judgment, I'm not going to be effective, I'm not going to provide those answers that people deserve, I'm not going to be able to see offenders brought to justice that again, families absolutely deserve. So at that point, at least the media sees, it's really important to be as professional as possible. and there absolutely have been times when it's been really difficult to bury emotion to try and put that all to one side to actually get on with the job in hand.
I think the time for thinking about the emotional side often has not came after those immediate few hours and I can remember numerous occasions when we'd completed a scene, the vehicle's been recovered, everyone had left, and often as not, maybe middle of the night, early hours of the morning, stood on my own at a scene, going through the scene for the last time to make sure that any traces that we were ever there have been removed, because the last thing you want if, the loved ones of somebody who's lost their life on the roads visits the scene and often as not families do want to visit scenes, they might want to lay tributes, things like that. The last thing they want to see is evidence that, you know, there's been a catastrophic collision, there's been a fatal collision at that point in time or at that location and that was a really lonely place to be at times when everything has settled down and colleagues have gone off to do various parts of the investigation. So that's when the emotion starts to come in and thinking about those involved and you look at, you know, could I have done something differently? Could I have done something else? Could I have done something more to try and help out what happened? Particularly if you've been involved in supporting paramedics and things like that at scenes and again, I've had plenty of occasions where I've helped out with first aid, you know, you're fighting a battle, you know, is already lost. You kind of think back over it and that's the time when, the adrenaline has started to drop off and you start to think about all these things and you start to think about the people involved and the ongoing sort of impact of that and then you finished at the scene, go back to the station, if it's the early hours, this might be the only one in the station, and it's a case of making sure that everything is as squared away as it can be, ready for the following day and you know that you've got to steel yourself, you've got to just pull your trousers up and get on and really think about, well actually I've got another shift to do tomorrow, I'm going to be coming back in and doing the same all over again.
So it's a case of having to process things as quickly and effectively as possible to be able to make sure that you're then in the right frame of mind that you're then ready to go out and do it all over again potentially the following day.
[00:12:43] Hattie Hlad: Absolutely.
Let's talk about the immediate and long lasting effects of being exposed to excessive traumatic events. How do you deal with this and how do you keep your mind safe in these situations?
[00:12:54] Olly Tayler: So everybody deals with trauma differently and the way I try to explain to people is that when you, deal with a traumatic event, it has a first responder and that could be anything from a murder to a suicide to, an accident to a collision to whatever it might be and over my 30 of those on numerous occasions and in the case of fatal collisions, more occasions than I care to count and you get a trauma build up. But that's okay, because you can put it in a bucket. So you can pop that trauma in a bucket. For want of a better phrase, it's a shit bucket. You pop it in the bucket. Over time and the more of these traumatic events that you attend, that bucket will fill up. But that's okay, because you can just get a bigger bucket. So you just get a bigger bucket. Again, over time, that bucket fills up. But you keep getting a bigger bucket and a bigger bucket until you end up with a skip full of the stuff and you've got nowhere to put it. So you have to find a way of trying to deal with that, in as an effective way as possible and it's a sad reality that I've known of colleagues from all three Blue Light services whose repeated exposure to trauma has taken the heaviest toll and has had the worst of consequences for them, which is utterly tragic, absolutely tragic.
Different people find different ways to deal with the repeated exposure to trauma. For me, I'm really fortunate. I live down on the edge of Dartmoor, I've got a huge, big, national park that I like to go walking in. I can just clear my head out, I can just disappear away and everything just melts away which I know I'm really lucky in that respect. I also love the water. I always found peace by the water or on the water. So again, being in the West Country, I've got water around, all around me and, you know, I can go out on the water and again, I can, keep those wolves at bay, you know, I can keep those circling wolves if you want to think about it. those traumatic events, that repeated exposure, sort of, think about it as a pack of wolves that are constantly circling and that, you know, they're always there. Occasionally, I can hear them howling in the distance, I can, sometimes they're closer than other days, depends, you know, it might be the anniversary of an incident, it might be that something has reminded me about an incident and it's just a case of keeping them from the door, because the last thing I want is for those wolves to come and bite me, and I'd like to think that over the years, I've been able to manage that trauma, to keep those wolves at bay and if they are approaching that I know they're coming, you know, I know that my family worry about it and they worry that one day everything that I've been exposed to over 30 years is going to catch up with me and I share those concerns to a certain extent because I don't know whether one day it will, but certainly at the moment it's fine and no, those circling wolves are well out of the way, but you just don't know.
[00:16:04] Hattie Hlad: Yeah, you've got to be really safe. It's so sad to think that one bad decision behind the wheel of a car can not only bring so much loss for the victim and their families, but also to the first responders who will carry that trauma long term. Let's talk PTSD. We've read the study carried out by Cambridge University called Policing the Job and Life, and that reports that 20 percent of officers showed symptoms of PTSD, that's a huge statistic. What support is in place for this?
[00:16:33] Olly Tayler: So PTSD is a really important subject that I'm really glad is being talked about and has been recognised in first responders far more than ever used to be. I go back to the early days of my career in the early nineties when if you attended a traumatic incident. Often as not, it would be a chat out the back with a cup of tea and a biscuit with one of the old sweats on the section who would say, you'll be fine lad, you know, it's absolutely fine, you know, this is part and parcel of policing. Which it absolutely is, and I totally accepted that, but it didn't help really. So nowadays there are all sorts of support mechanisms in place. both sort of internally within the organisation, there's peer support mechanisms, there's counselling available, there's wellness available, there's all sorts of different ways that those that have been exposed to repeated trauma, and I'm not just talking in roads policing, there are other areas of policing that are also exposed to utterly horrific trauma, child abuse investigation, crime scene investigation, you know, just a couple of examples.
The other thing that's really important is to talk about it, much like I'm talking about it today. Now, those people that know me, and if any of them are listening, I'll apologise now, is that I'm probably one of the worst at taking my own advice, but certainly talking about incidents and talking about events that you've experienced, particularly with somebody who understands. So, I was really fortunate throughout my time on Roads to Policing to have some really good colleagues around me and I'm not going to embarrass her by naming her, but there was a particular colleague that I worked very closely with for a good number of years and we've talked since about some really dark times that we experienced on roads policing down in Devon and Cornwall, where we went to some utterly horrific collisions, scenes that can only be described as painted in hell, that we went and dealt with as a crewmate if you like, and by having that individual to talk to and to check in on you and to check in on them and to be able to understand what it was that we'd attended and what it was we'd seen and heard and all those things was really important and I look back and think actually I do wonder where I'd be now if I didn't have colleagues like that who were there at that moment in time to be able to support me through what were some really dark moments in my policing career.
So it's really important to not to bottle it up. If you bottle it up, it's just going to get worse and worse and, you know, that bottle will one day explode and, it can again be in the most catastrophic of ways so by dealing with it by trying to unpick it by talking about it to professionals, to colleagues, to friends, to family, whoever it might be, it is really important and that's really the only way I think a lot of this can be processed and dealt with. Now, I've always had a real about retired officers. So I'm recently retired myself, I've not long finished, my 30 years and until very recently, there was very little for those that have retired from blue light services.
[00:20:08] Hattie Hlad: Support wise?
[00:20:08] Olly Tayler: Support was very little and really it felt like once you'd left the organisation that you were no longer their problem.
[00:20:15] Hattie Hlad: Right.
[00:20:16] Olly Tayler: That has changed, it is changing, slowly, unfortunately too late for some people, but it is changing and there are now, in fact the government's announced a 24 hour helpline for both serving and retired police officers, which is a huge step forward to enable people like myself, if they are struggling, if they are having issues around things that they've dealt with as a frontline responder, Blue Light responder, there is going to be somewhere that they can turn to that is specifically for them, which is a really good step forward and something that we haven't had until that point, until this point.
So, you know, that's really good, but it doesn't mean that trauma goes away. It's always sat there, it's always in the back of your mind. It's all about trying to manage it. You're never going to unsee what you've seen, you're never going to unhear what you've heard. What you can do is try to process it in a way that is as least damaging as possible.
[00:21:11] Hattie Hlad: Just following on from that, and you mentioned this earlier, that some people may have the view, and hopefully not many, that, well, this is your chosen career, trauma is part and parcel of that, particularly when you choose areas with potential of high repeated trauma events such as road safety.
What spurs you on to educate people on the effects of bad decisions behind the wheel?
[00:21:31] Olly Tayler: That's really interesting and a question that certainly colleagues of mine have asked me over the years. There's one particular conversation I had with a colleague at a collision that we were both at and they came up to me and said, how? Why? Why do you keep coming back? How do you keep coming back to these scenes? And you're right. Policing was my chosen career. Roads policing was my chosen path within that career and I was under no illusion when I joined roads policing, that I knew that I would end up attending scenes of utter horror. So, for those that may be thinking, well, this is what you chose, they're absolutely right. I totally agree, I totally agree, they're absolutely right. But I think what people need to understand is that repeated exposure to trauma wasn't of my making. That was down to other people. Decisions made by other people behind the wheel, either while they were driving or before they even got into the car, when that, those sequence of events started to unfold.
Somebody has to deal with these things.
So, the likes of myself, many colleagues who are still serving, I can almost guarantee while we're talking today, Hattie, there are Blue Light responders out there, at this moment in time, dealing with a fatality on the roads, they have to be dealt with, people have to be, try to be saved at the end of the day, collisions have to be investigated. So there has to be that group of committed individuals who will go out and do that, again and again to answer those questions that I mentioned earlier, what happened and why did it happen? To see offenders brought to justice. Because when you look at it, those that are left behind aren't able to see justice done for themselves. They're relying on police officers and other people within the justice system to see justice done for them and for their loved ones and if nobody was out there to do that's a really sorry state of affairs. So to have people who are out there doing that, those that think, well it was your chosen career path, nobody forced you into it, whilst you're absolutely right on one hand, what you've also got to think about is actually look at the work that they do. Look at the committed professionalism of so many first responders to ensure that everything is done to try and save a life and again, I've seen paramedics and doctors and air ambulance staff fighting to save somebody's life, often it's not for an hour or more at the roadside, just to stabilise somebody enough to get them to hospital, to give medical staff at a hospital a fighting chance to be able to save someone's life and it may well be that person's life they're trying to save is completely innocent, they've done nothing wrong. They've ended up in being in the wrong place at the wrong time and then due to somebody else's decision behind the wheel, they've ended up with life threatening or critical injuries that aren't their fault in the slightest. So it's about those people who have chosen that career path to save lives, to see offenders brought to justice, to investigate these serious and fatal collisions, to try and do some good, to bring some closure to families, to try and make the world a better place at the end of the day. So you know, that's certainly why I did what I did, was to be able to see justice done for those that couldn't see it done for themselves, to bring those offenders to justice, to make them face the consequences of their decision making behind the wheel, because if I don't do it who else is going to? And don't get me wrong, there are plenty of former colleagues who perform the same role and going out day after day to do this and are consummate professionals at what they do and are able to go out, repeatedly go out to these scenes and do the absolute very best that they can do to deal with and investigate these horrific collisions.
[00:26:11] Hattie Hlad: Here's a question for you, with everything that you've achieved and accomplished and witnessed, why haven't you sat back and thought, I've done my bit, it's time to retire now. Instead, you're more active than ever in road safety education and flying the flag with so much passion. Is it because you feel more still needs to be done?
[00:26:29] Olly Tayler: Absolutely. The easy answer to that is absolutely yes. There is so much more that can be done, and yeah, I should retire. Yeah, I've retired. I should be sat with my feet up, you're so right. But after everything that I've seen, after everything that I've dealt with over the years, I know that there's more that can be done and if by sharing my experiences, one person who listens to this does one thing differently and there's a decision they make, if they change a decision they make, it may be that there's somebody listening to this in a car in the moment and may be tempted to look at their phone, may look at their speed and realize their speed is higher than it should be, if that one person changes a decision, doesn't look at their phone, drops their speed, whatever it might be, that results in them not being involved in a serious or fatal collision, then absolutely I've done my job and that's another life saved, that's another family that isn't going to have to face a lifetime of heartache and pain through losing a loved one on the roads. So it's about the feeling that I've still got something to give. that I can use my experience, I can use my knowledge, if you like, to be able to help to educate others, to think about what they're doing behind the wheel and what they're thinking about doing behind the wheel, just make a small change. You know, we're not asking people to change everything about themselves because, you know, that's not right. But it's about just make one small change, don't go for that overtake, no, don't have that drink, don't answer that call, don't look at that text message, whatever it might be because the moment you do, you're risking not only your life behind the wheel on the roads, you're risking the lives and well being of everybody around you. Once you make that decision, the chances are that a sequence of events will start to unfold and at the point at which it all goes out of control, there is nothing you can do to change that, absolutely nothing, you merely become a passenger. Doesn't matter which seat of the car you're sat in, driver or otherwise.
Once the vehicle goes out of control, you are just a passenger and where that vehicle ends up, what that vehicle ends up hitting isn't down to you, it's down to physics and gravity and you are never going to beat physics and gravity, let's be fair. So it's just about trying to encourage people, trying to implore upon people that a decision you make behind the wheel can have catastrophic and long lasting consequences, not just for those directly involved, but actually, for a much wider group of people, I think you mentioned about the, analogy of throwing a pebble in a pond, and that's so true. That initial splash is the collision, if you like, and those ripples that go out, and the bigger the splash, the bigger the ripples, the further those ripples will go and that's so true, is that people never think about the consequences of their actions. Who it can impact, how long it can impact them for, and actually how far reaching a simple decision somebody can make, how far reaching the consequences of that decision can and often as not will be and people just don't think about this.
[00:29:57] Hattie Hlad: No, it's like changing the mindset, really, isn't it? And trying to get people to think about their actions and...
[00:30:04] Olly Tayler: It'll never happen to me.
[00:30:05] Hattie Hlad: Yeah, yeah, it really is. Olly, what message do you want to share to anyone who's about to make a poor decision or dangerous decision behind the wheel, to those that regularly make bad decisions that just haven't caught up with them yet, the ones that are thinking it will never happen to me?
[00:30:22] Olly Tayler: That's really simple, Hattie. The simple answer is, don't be so selfish. At the end of the day, when people make poor decisions behind the wheel, they're just being self centred and not thinking about the consequences that decision can have. At the end of the day, there's a feeling amongst the people that maybe regularly make poor decisions behind the wheel, that it'll never happen to me.
[00:30:45] Hattie Hlad: The invincible attitude.
[00:30:46] Olly Tayler: Absolutely. It always happens to other people. They couldn't be more wrong, because these sorts of collisions that I've talked about today happen to the most ordinary of people when they very least expect it.
Imagine rolling a pair of dice. Okay, and you might roll up a pair of dice three, four, five times. If you roll a double six, that's it, game over, you know, you've lost everything. But there are still people out there who are prepared to keep rolling those dice and every time they make a poor decision they're rolling those dice. I can absolutely guarantee you, through experience of many years of dealing with incidents like this, that those people out there, who are out there now, thinking about answering the phone, having that extra drink, exceeding the speed limit, doing something on the road that's at high risk, you're rolling those dice every time. You are going to roll a double six at some point. It is then far too late to regret it. The best way to do it and the best way to deal with it to make sure that you don't get involved in things like that is to think that it could happen to me and it could happen to me and there's a far greater chance it'll happen to me if I make a poor decision behind the wheel. If you don't make a poor decision behind the wheel, the chances of it happening to you are massively reduced. Put the dice in the glove box, leave them alone, don't chance it, don't roll them.
[00:32:08] Hattie Hlad: Amazing. Thank you, Olly.
Wow, Olly, the resounding feeling I have right now from listening to you is I just want to say thank you, thank you for choosing to do that and I want to say thank you to those that have done this like you and to those that are out there right now.
I'm sure you will agree that was such a powerful conversation with Olly today. I'm so grateful we have been given the opportunity to understand those in the Blue Light Services are having to deal with such a sheer number of traumatic events during their career, but also how we as the general public can offer our support to make their roles just that little bit easier.
Thanks for tuning into this episode of Driven by Excellence. We hope you enjoyed listening and if you did, please don't forget to click that follow button, leave us a review or share this episode with a colleague. For more information and to keep up to date with industry news, head to our website pdtfleettrainingsolutions.co.uk