Improving driver safety through education
Best Practice Guide
DRIVER TRAINING
For an organisation, there is a legal and moral duty to ensure that staff are fully trained for the tasks in hand. For driving, this clearly means some form of risk assessment and training Sat-Nav display screens are all making it easier to drive and taking away driving decisions, but at the same time taking attention from the road. Do organisations assume drivers understand all the technology and how it effects driving standards? Or do drivers need some readjustment to all the “new” stuff, even simple “toolbox” talks would help prevent drivers becoming overwhelmed. Technology Do all Ultimately if vehicles Telematics is becoming d rivers n and drivers aren’t on the more and more common, e e d to be train road or sharing it when even a simple in-cab e necessa d? Not others are on it then camera is useful. While rily, but collisions can’t happen. they can be used to a t h ll ey need to What steps can be defend the actions of be risk assesse taken? Can journeys the driver, they also d be eliminated, shared, highlight the actions interven and given tion changed timings or use of that driver in the are high if they of remote conferencing. moments before an risk It’s easy to get caught up incident. If they are driving in the day to day running of well that will show too. The the business, not to intentionally big problem with telematics is ignore the road risk but leave it on the use of the data that is provided. the back burner until something happens, If the organisation isn’t reviewing it or when it’s too late. RoSPA is well placed at least carrying out some form of trend to review the MORR status of a business, analysis with the data, it’s pointless. undertake driver profiling, risk assessments There are many variants of systems and “grade” the driver and advise on in the market place and what works appropriate interventions, carry out “train the for one company may not be right for trainer” courses, e-learning and workshop another, for that reason RoSPA cannot delivery to drivers, managers and directors. support one system over another. What is important is that when they are in situ, Keep learning they are used and reviewed and that It’s a truism that we “don’t know any training and development points are what we don’t know until we know communicated across the business. it”, and education helps fill the void. Drivers of large vehicles have come to It’s the “what” and “who” that needs rely on camera technology to help them education, then it’s just commitment. when reversing or driving in congested At the beginning of the article the term situations. When they were first introduced “incident” was used in favour of “accident”. there was resistance from many drivers A definition of an accident (of which there are about “big brother is watching”; nowadays many) is an event that “cannot be planned, the same resistance exists if someone predicted or prevented”, all of which a were to try to remove the technology. driver can do with training and support. Post collision investigation evidences The negatives of technology that 93-95 per cent of incidents are due Technology, the saviour to all the road to human error that perhaps could be safety problems, or is it? It’s all very well avoided. If we learn to drive, and usually having the technological advances towards need instruction to pass that test, why road safety in place, so long as road users do we then stop? How many individuals (not just drivers or those driving for work) take golf lessons, or music lessons or don’t become overly reliant on them to the undertake professional development, detriment of making their own decisions in but not for the one action that can kill or the first instance and understand how the seriously maim others. But then aren’t we technology works in the second. For many all good drivers, or is it the other guy? L older drivers, who learnt to drive in vehicles with a carburettor, now find themselves in a vehicle with an ECU and fuel injection FURTHER INFORMATION systems – a very different piece of kit that www.rospa.com no one has explained to them how it works. place to educate the young about the dangers on the road. You could approach a head teacher with an offer to sponsor some form of road safety training. Women’s Institutes or U3A groups often look for guest speakers or an approach to a local supermarket to run a road safety event for the shoppers.
Supported by
John Greenhough, RoSPA fleet safety consultant
Improving driver safety through education is a question of choice. Do the drivers need educating or is it the public they come into contact with that need the education? Driver training is hard to quantify; would a driver be as likely or less likely to be involved in an incident (note not accident) as a result of receiving driver training. Accepting that the riskiest activity most workers face is driving for work and that 30 per cent of the road fatalities were involved with a driving for work activity, maybe the better question is “would those numbers be higher if no training took place?” The National Driver Offenders Retraining Scheme (NDORS) offers educational training for drivers detected of a lesser driver offence in lieu of court proceedings, and evidence supports that following the training drivers are less likely to reoffend. If the information contained in this type of training were available to drivers before they are detected, wouldn’t that be better? For the majority of drivers, the investment in this training is costly and time consuming and until they have a problem (i.e. are detected with a traffic violation), what is the need? But for an organisation there is a legal and moral duty to ensure their staff are fully trained for the tasks in hand. What’s the risk? For driving this clearly means some form of risk assessment and appropriate training. A Managing Occupational Road Risk review or audit is a good starting point for the organisation, acting as a “gap analysis” on the actions and defensibility of the business in the event things go wrong. Do all drivers need to be trained? Not necessarily, but they all need to be risk assessed and those deemed medium to high risk given some form of intervention to support them. But why not offer classroom type training to all company drivers? It’s cost effective, shows due diligence, supports a culture of compliance and promotes road safety, not only to the work element but to the personal driving staff undertake. RoSPA has long championed “ROADCRAFT – The Police Drivers Handbook” as a reference source of good driving. The principles form the basis of in-vehicle driver training offered by RoSPA, with many organisations opting for their drivers to undertake the RoSPA driving test in an attempt to obtain a Gold award, one of the highest civilian driving awards that can be obtained. But what about educating other road users? Can an organisation have influence on how others drive? Schools are a great
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