We get asked some very good questions, so here’s the third in our series where we answer them for you! If you’re interested in the other instalments, you can read the first one here, and the second one here.
Why don’t you do any manual car handling skills training?
Car handling skills are really easy to learn, and can give the driver a sense of overconfidence, which is a really bad thing to have on the road. There’s an important document that’s come out of years of driver training research, called the ‘Goals of Driver Education’ (GDE) matrix, and it sets out a hierarchy of skills which are important for drivers to possess in order to be safe. Manual skills are right at the bottom, below cognitive skills like looking ahead, assessing hazards, and knowing what to do in risky situations. Training of these higher-level skills forms the core of the Fleetcoach programme. If you want to read more on the GDE matrix, you can do that here.
How did you get the video clips for Fleetcoach?
We filmed them! Our team zoomed around the country in our purpose built camera vehicle, and captured hundreds of hours of footage of our wonderful roads. Very few of the scenarios are staged (fact: people walk really funny when they know they’re being filmed!) and mostly we just filmed whatever we came across. Hard to believe with some of the hairy driving we captured! We selected the clips that made it into the final programme based on how many hazards they contained, whether the scene was representative of something you’d come across in New Zealand, and to make sure we had a good spread of scenarios for drivers to practice their skills in the curriculum we were building. Road trip around New Zealand – it was a hard job, but someone had to do it!
How do I define who my drivers are?
The simplest answer is that everyone who drives a vehicle on the road, should have access to some kind of higher-level driving skills training. (That’s the kind Fleetcoach teaches, rather than your standard driving lesson). And in a workplace setting, according to the new Health and Safety laws, a vehicle is counted as part of the workplace.
So if your employees drive for work purposes they’re your drivers, and they need to be trained! Anyone who does even just a little bit of driving for work, who has had a driving incident or who expresses a high level of confidence in their driving (or conversely, a lack of confidence, which can be dangerous too) should then be a focus.
If you want to prioritise further, here are some tips for how to set the order for which people from the above groups might put through the training.
If you’re unsure how to communicate with your staff that you’d like them to undertake the training, we’ve put together some tips.
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