Time is overdue for the tightening up of health, safety and other sporting rules

This rogue event, which takes place on an island which is defiantly independent of the UK and Europe on matters of internal governance, has claimed well over 200 lives over its hundred years.

Safety must be paramount in motorsport

If you talk with Bernie Ecclestone about his priorities over the years for Formula one of which sport he has long been the supremo, he will mention safety comes before everything else. These are not weasel words just for public consumption but the truth. Your correspondent's links with F1 go back more than forty years and the greatest and most welcome change to the sport over this time has been the major improvements in safety which have taken place. In the past drivers and spectators were routinely killed or seriously injured during Grands Prix every season. But now, thanks to rigorous design rules for cars and circuits, the sport is just about as safe as it could be. The Polish driver Robert Kubica had a very big accident during Sunday's Canadian Grand Prix but he survived with only minor injuries. The motorcycle rider Marc Ramsbotham who crashed at the Isle of Man race on Friday was not so lucky and his family mourns his loss.

Health and Safety owes little to chance

Health and Safety experts in sport or any other human endeavour will tell you that good HSE performance owes little or nothing to chance. There must be enforceable and consistently applied rules if acceptable health and safety performance is to be achieved. In recent times we have seen how some big corporations often fail to apply proper HSE controls despite their rhetoric that they 'put safety first'. These corporations should look at Formula one if they really want to learn how to put proper health and safety regulations in place.

Time for proper international standards?

Whilst F1 has a good track record on safety its delivery on health (or one aspect of health) is rather less commendable. The 2007 F1 championship is the season when the stigma of tobacco company promotions was supposed at last to disappear from the sport - or so I thought. But at Monaco not only were the Ferrari cars and drivers still prominently displaying the brand of their tobacco giant sponsor but there was prominent tobacco advertising on and around the circuit as well. We are into the rogue state syndrome again - as is the case with the Isle of Man the principality of Monaco is not obliged to apply European rules - so it doesn't. If proper safety standards (those that apply throughout the European Union) were applied to the Isle of Man then there is no way that the TT race, in its current lethal set up, would be allowed to take place. Similarly if proper controls existed then Monaco would not be allowed to be the last of the dinosaurs and to permit unrestricted tobacco brand promotion at its Grand Prix. Surely it is high time for international standards on such matters?

Sport shouldn't kill people

Sport, wonderful and boosting to the spirits though it can be, is essentially a trivial business and it has no right to claim lives unnecessarily. You cannot eliminate risk and danger from many sports - that is part of their ethos and their history. But what you can do is apply strict standards to ensure that the risks are minimised as far as possible. If individual sports or nations will not do this for themselves then international rules need to apply. This idea will not be popular with some - I can already hear the 'protect our freedoms' brigade (the same mob that insist that it is their 'right' to smoke in a restaurant whilst I am trying to enjoy my food) baying for my blood - not for the first time! But it seems to me self-evident that sport shouldn't kill people - either directly, as in the Isle of Man, or indirectly through the promotion of tobacco products and brands.

Business can set an example

If the business world does want to demonstrate its social responsibility then maybe an example could be set by corporations by refusing to be associated with sports or events where the health and/or safety rules are inadequate. For example at the Isle of Man TT Cable and Wireless and Unisys were two global companies involved as supporters and sponsors. Without their support (and the support of other sponsors) the event could not have taken place. Do these companies also have blood on their hands? Similarly sponsors of Ferrari, such as Shell, will have seen their brand presentation diminished at Monaco by its overt link with Marlboro. Brands can be damaged by association with the unsavoury and global brand managers need to think about these issues.