Driver CPC

bring environmental, financial and operational benefits. The government highlights the reduction in HGV-related collisions in the DCPC’s favour. HGV-involved fatalities have fallen from 292 in 2012 to 216 in 2021, a 26% reduction, although the 2021 figure is probably suppressed somewhat by the pandemic effect. In 2019 there were 250 fatal HGV collisions – still a 14% reduction.

MANDATORY POST-OFFENCE TRAINING – DOES IT WORK?

According to UK Road Offender Education, a record 1.76 million people attended a mandatory driver training course of some kind in 2022, mostly national speed awareness courses (NSAC).

An Ipsos Mori study showed that a NSAC is marginally more effective than penalties, albeit in a low-risk group; 96% of attendees had no active points on their licence. Reoffending rates are slightly lower among those who take the NSAC – but they still have a 21% reoffending rate. In other words, training is better than penalties, but it still doesn’t stop people speeding.

Culture, however, is a very strong determinant. UK driving licences are held by 18.5 million women and 21.9 million men, yet only one-fifth of motoring offences are committed by women. Women have 80,000 points on their licences compared with men’s 195,000. Men are responsible for 80% of drinkdriving offences, 96% of dangerous driving and 76% of speeding.

Research suggests the difference is not in biology but in culture. Women are not intrinsically more careful. Rather, workplaces do not tolerate female risk-taking, while they do tolerate male risk-taking – even when it goes wrong.

Many other safety initiatives have taken place over that period, including more safety kit, public awareness campaigns and greater driver monitoring with telematics and cameras.

Hence, the reduction in HGV-related deaths is fairly modest for a 10-year period, and it isn’t at all clear how much of it is due to more training.

Dave Conway, road safety manager at FM Conway, believes that training does very little to make risky drivers safer. “We have tried for decades to effect change in the health and safety world, but culture and behaviours cannot be truly changed, only influenced,” he argues. “You cannot create lasting change in an adult. The huge improvements in road casualty statistics up until 2010 were all technological solutions.”

Training may improve already compliant drivers, but it does little to suppress high-risk behaviour. “The ‘bad guys’ have to go,” says Conway. “Driver coaching doesn’t work [for high-risk drivers]. You must manage them out of the business. Training works in the short term, but as soon as someone is busy or stressed, they will forget and revert to risky habits.

“Dr Lisa Dorn [associate professor of driver behaviour at Cranfield University] has done a lot of work on the difficulty of changing the driving habits of mature people. At 30, 40, 50 years old, training does not work. We need to look for hard fixes, such as technology, not soft ones such as training.”

Logistics UK’s Gardner asserts that we must differentiate between driver performance – “the driver’s knowledge, skill, perceptual and cognitive abilities” – and what they choose to do with these, which she defines as “driver behaviour”.

“Training can certainly improve driver performance, but operators should pay close attention to