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Frightening prospect
With the new EC Directive on staging of WV Driving and Testing, there is great concern from professional driver trainers to know how road safety is going to be improved. Vile can understand the logic of training on a rigid vehicle (Cat C) followed by the test, as we were led to believe the licence would need to be held for at least six months to gain lorry driving experience before upgrading to artic (Cat C&E) after additional training, but this is not happening.
After passing the rigid vehicle test the driver then forwards the pass certificate together with theory pass to the TATA to obtain provisional entitlement for C+E (artic/drawbar). Then, with a minimum amount of training. the candidate can re-sit the driving test for full entitlement.
Even more appalling is that the candidate can ignore artic training and gain a C+E by attaching a trailer (preferably close coupled) to the same vehicle that was used for Category C. This now permits the driving of articulated vehicles without any experience. Imagine the problems that are going to be encountered by these drivers, especially with reversing (more so with drawbars) at awkward delivery points, and there are many such places—ask any professional driver. So where does road safety come in? It is frightening.
DG Buffery, Associated Driver Training Services, Severn Beach, BristoL