RITE blasts short-timers
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• HGV driver training schools which offer to train drivers within less than the 15 days recommended by the RTITB have come in for 'strong criticism from Gordon Asbury, manager of driver training at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA).
Speaking at the RAC's symposium on fleet safety, Asbury said that HGV drivers as a whole have a very good safety record, but he is concerned about the amount of training newcomers are getting.
"The recommended time for such a programme is 15 training days, to be extended until the trainees are at HGV Test standard," he says. "In most training establishments that type of course has a duration of 10 days. . . there is even a national driver training school that professed to be capable of that conversion in five-and-a-half days. As a member of the working party that produced the recommendations I know we did not specify too great a time for the training."
Asbury claims that drivers are being trained solely to pass the test, and that much of the training takes place on unladen articulated units.
"What is being left out of training?" asks Asbury, "The answer is 'Anything not covered in the HGV test'."