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Driver Training Sector Not Ready to Cope With Impact of New Corporate Manslaughter Law

The driver training sector is on the verge of meltdown if the new Corporate Manslaughter Law causes fleet managers to dramatically increase their focus on driver risk assessments and driver training.

Graham Hurdle, who has been a fleet road safety expert for 20 years and is now managing director of E-Training World, gave his stark warning after a debate raged over the level of awareness with fleet managers regarding the Corporate Manslaughter Law.

One Poll had suggested that 69% of fleet managers apparently know nothing about the new Corporate Manslaughter Act, which came into force on April 6, however GE Capital Solutions found that 90% of fleet managers cited the Corporate Manslaughter Act when asked what factors were likely to impact on their policy decisions over the next 12 months.

“There is one aspect of this discussion which, as yet, has not been touched upon”, said Hurdle, “and that is if we assume that duty of care issues are now genuinely rising to the top of the fleet manager’s agenda, can the driver training sector cope?.

“If we combine the responsibilities of the UK company car fleet, the grey fleet sector and the UK’s vocational drivers (which covers buses, coaches, and all types of commercial vehicles), we have a situation whereby the new corporate manslaughter laws will drive company car and van fleets towards more risk assessments and driver training. We also have the new vocational driver’s CPC coming into effect this Sept for PCV’s and Sept 2009 for HGV’s, and a growing grey fleet sector which is becoming increasingly complex to assess and control.

“All of this leads to a massive burden on the driver training and driver risk assessment sector.

“If we look at the numbers, there are currently 42,000 registered ADI’s (Approved Driving Instructors) in the UK, of which approximately 7,000 are non active.

“Of the active 35,000 the majority are focused on learner drivers which leaves what is widely accepted as an estimated pool of fleet driver trainers of around 2000.

“With such limited resource of 2000 trainers and a market of several million drivers, we are on the verge of the biggest surge in activity the driver training sector has ever seen and there will simply not be enough trainers to deliver the required volumes across the car and commercial vehicle sectors.

“Even a few years ago when I was managing director of Pro-Drive there were times when we struggled to allocate trainers during peak periods, and in those days the commitment to driver training in the fleet sector was a lot lower.

“That is one of the reasons I started E-Training World to offer online driver risk assessments and e-driver training so that we could assess and train an unlimited amount of drivers as the demand inevitably grew.

“My warning is simply that companies should plan now if they are looking to meet their duty of care obligations, because by leaving it too late may result in not being able to comply for quite some time – which will not be deemed a viable excuse in the eyes of the law if a serious blameworthy accident occurs with one of your drivers”.


16 April 2008

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