Core Driving Skills Remain Fundamental to Risk Assessments

Assessing drivers’ attitude, knowledge, concentration and observation, and hazard perception skills are core to delivering a meaningful and accurate driver risk assessment.

That’s according to Graham Hurdle, managing director of E-Training World, who says that the fleet sector could get carried away with seeking new academic and increasingly psychometric ways of assessing drivers when, in reality, the basic principles should always apply.

“Competitive forces in any sector mean that some companies are always looking at new and different ways of doing things to create enhanced selling points or a competitive edge,” said Graham.

“With many products and services, by seeking new approaches and more sophisticated techniques is beneficial to customers, yet I fear that when it comes to assessing drivers it could detrimental.

“When you drill down to the basics of assessing a driver you are looking to identify whether an individual poses a risk, and what is the nature of that risk so that relevant training can be provided to reduce it.

“The fundamental skill sets that determine a driver’s competence have always been their attitude, knowledge, concentration and observation, and hazard perception. In other words, do they have the correct attitude towards driving and the risks of being in control of a vehicle, do they understand road signs and laws so that any information presented to them on the journey ensures they make correct decisions, are they seeing and consuming what is around them on the road, and are they picking up clues to problems that may lie ahead.

“It is for this reason that the DSA driving test looks at areas like this, and at no stage is a new driver asked to carry out a personality test to assess whether they should be given a licence.

“In my view the reason for that is because it is the basic skills that underpin safe driving, yet the corporate sector could see itself drifting away from that.”

Graham also argues that the further removed a driving assessment is from driving-related content, the less buy-in you get from drivers.

“When individuals are asked to take a driver risk assessment they expect it to be about driving,” continued Graham.

“By using relevant content means company drivers appreciate why the questions are being asked of them, and we’ve always had tremendous feedback regarding our systems.”

For more information about E-Training World’s online driver assessment, which is a skills and knowledge-based system, please contact Jonathan Mosley on 0345 260 7998 or email admin@e-trainingworld.com