11 August 2009
Becky Allen

When Stuart Thompson swapped his lab coat for a company car key and took on a new sales job at global chemical manufacturer Huntsman, he didn't bargain with his first challenge being an advanced driving course.

But at Huntsman, like many other large chemical and pharmaceutical firms, it's a case of no advanced driving test, no sales job. "I had to do the course because I'd changed job. Because I had a company car and was expected to do more than 10,000 miles a year, I had to have an advanced driving qualification," Thompson explains.

Though he'd been driving for nearly 30 years, spending a day with an advanced driving instructor was daunting, he admits: "It brings back all the memories of learning to drive. All this information you've filed away at the back of your brain suddenly comes out, and you end up realising you don't know as much as you thought you did."

If you drive for work, spending a day at the wheel doesn't sound like a big deal, but when your every move is being scrutinised and you are forced to think about each aspect of your driving, it's a different matter. "I was shattered at the end of the day," he says.

Thompson's one-day advanced driving course with DriveSafe Training began with a short assessment of his driving. After that, the instructor took the wheel, at the same time narrating what he was seeing and thinking, before asking his trainee to do the same.

Though it might alarm fellow passengers, talking to yourself while driving encourages you to be much more aware of your surroundings, says Thompson: "One of the best things to do is this narration, and talk out loud while you drive, because it gets you thinking. I've been doing it a bit on my own in the car. It's a good technique. When my instructor narrated his drive, it was fantastic. It was like a piece of poetry. The words he used to describe the driving conditions fitted perfectly."

Since the course, he says he's changed many elements of his driving. He no longer crosses his hands on the steering wheel (after being told he risked his arms being broken should his air bag deploy) and he keeps the radio, satnav and hands-free mobile off in the car so that he can concentrate on his driving. "These techniques aren't natural to me and at my age it becomes more difficult to get into new routines, so I'm now driving without the radio to stop me falling back into old habits," he says.

Second time round

As well as being far more aware of his driving and the road conditions, Thompson says he's learned new techniques that help make him safer on the road; things he was never taught while a learner driver.

"It's not one thing, but a combination of things that mean you're driving more smoothly and more safely," he says. "On the motorway, for example, my instructor talked about having a safety zone. When you're coming up to a lorry and you get ready to overtake it, you make sure that if anything happens behind or in front of your car you can always pull onto the hard shoulder rather than get trapped beside the lorry with nowhere to go except the central reservation," he explains.

Despite the fact that more than 35,000 drivers have been through the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM) occupational driver training over the past three years, little hard evidence exists on the impact on health and safety at work.

But there's plenty of anecdotal evidence that shows training has a marked effect, says Rick Wood, training manager at RoSPA's Driver & Fleet Solutions team: "According to the insurance industry, who encourage high-risk fleets to train, accident costs can be reduced by up to 50%."

Company case studies seem to bear this out. The gas installers' membership scheme operator CORGI brought in a work-related road risk management process which resulted in a 60% reduction in the number of CORGI vehicles involved in collisions over an 18-month period. BP recorded a similar reduction of 50%, and research by Kwik-Fit Fleet found that 47% of companies surveyed considered fleet costs had been reduced through managing fleet safety.

Smaller firms report benefits too. West Country-based plant hire firm Alide Plant has achieved a significant drop in accident frequency and a 50% reduction in insurance premiums in two years by integrating road safety into its health and safety systems.

Poor test

The reason occupational driver training helps reduce road risk is, Wood believes, down to the shortcomings of the current UK driving test.

"The driving test produces drivers who drive reactively and by rote," he says. "The fleet driver trainer's job is quite different from teaching someone to drive. Driving safely for work isn't about passing and failing; it requires a different approach. It's more like coaching, and asking the right questions to get a driver to really think about what they're doing."

But, RoSPA says, reducing occupational road risk isn't only about training better drivers. Organisations need to develop a driving at work policy that includes the journey, the vehicle and management systems as well as the driver. That means risk assessments must include the type of road a driver will use, how far they need to travel, the time of day and weather conditions, as well as speed limits and how familiar a driver is with each route.

Risk assessments also need to include the vehicle - whether it's a company car or the employee's own - checking its maintenance, safety specifications, the load it carries and distractions, such as mobile phones and mobile data terminals.

"It's important to make the correct selection of vehicles so that employees are using the right car or van for the job they have to do," says Kevin Clinton, RoSPA's head of road safety. "But employers also need people, policies and procedures in place to manage occupational road risk as part of their
mainstream health and safety policies."

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Road risk facts

• Around one in three of all miles travelled on Britain's roads each year are
  for work.
• Of the three million company cars on our roads, one in three is involved in an accident every year.
• Up to one in three road accidents involves a vehicle being driven for work.
• Every week, around 20 road deaths and 250 serious injuries involve someone at work.
• Work-related road accidents are the biggest cause of work-related deaths, killing four times as many people as all other workplace deaths combined.
• For the majority of people, the most dangerous thing they do while at work is drive on the public highway.
• At-work road traffic accidents cost employers around £2.7 billion a year.
• Managing a driving for work policy is a legal requirement under health and safety legislation and road traffic law.
• Management and employees can be prosecuted for road traffic crashes involving work-related journeys, even when drivers are using their own vehicles.

Sources: Department for Transport, RoSPA and HSE

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First things

RoSPA's advice for health and safety professionals setting out on the road to an occupational driving policy is to begin by taking a long, hard look at what their drivers do at work.

"The first thing to do is to establish as much as possible about exactly what occupational driving risk the organisation has," says Wood. "This should start by analysing current practices and policies to establish what needs to be done, some of which may be management practices. Put these right and quite often the risk will reduce substantially. This could be looking at ways to reduce mileage to reduce exposure. Care needs to be taken, though, as shifting risk to the grey fleet makes it more difficult to manage."

Once you've gathered this information, you then need to decide whether or not you need the help of an advanced driver training organisation. If you do, there are many training providers to choose from. Many - like IAM Fleet - offer an online risk assessment tool that in 20 minutes will assess whether an occupational driver falls into a high, medium or low risk category. Based on a driver's job, their attitudes and behaviour, the online tool will identify which drivers require on-road training and which need either online
coaching or no further training.

As far as selecting a training provider goes, Wood's advice is to pick one of the top firms, which include RoSPA and IAM Fleet, make sure they use the best qualified advanced driver trainers, look for organisations with an ISO standard and a good track record, and pick a provider that can deliver the kind of package you need, such as licence checking or more specialised services such as training for high-risk employees like overseas drivers.

Categories:
Road safety, Training, Transport, Article, Training

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