Following the publication of the Government’s new Road Safety Strategy, DIA CEO Carly Brookfield has written to Ministers and DfT policy leads to welcome the long-awaited focus on road safety, while also urging closer, more meaningful engagement with the licensed driver and rider training profession.
The letter sets out why working trainers must be treated as a core stakeholder as the strategy moves from words into real-world delivery, and highlights how the profession’s frontline insight can help strengthen outcomes, identify gaps, and support practical implementation.
5 thoughts on “DIA CEO writes to Ministers calling for more involvement of instructors in road safety discussions”
If the DIA is really as concerned as it makes out about road safety and driving standards, or behaviour, in the first place it would do well to help ensure that ADIs collectively understand that firstly they should be teaching basic safe driver behaviour rather than teaching people to pass a test.
Similarly, one expects ADIs, as the only cadre of professional driving instructors in the public consciousness to set the best examples. I see too many examples of ADIs when, driving their vehicles, illustrating that they do not understand about safe driving principles, so it is reasonable to presume that such reference points might well be passed to their pupils.
Brilliant letter. Let’s hope the right people read it rather than passing it down the line. I am cynical about most of these matters but if you batter away at a door for long enough it does, at last, give way.
I have had a succession of African drivers who are all very experienced. Without exception, they are awful drivers. What works in Lagos does not work in the UK. However, their tactic is to take test after test until they get lucky. Clearly, cost is not an issue although these days, although time most certainly is.
The whole driver training system is not remotely fit for purpose. The theory test can be passed by word association and the hazard perception by treating it as a computer game. Instructors have minimal technical knowledge, forcing them into the refuge of telling students to stop arguing rather than presenting a compelling case as to why we want things done in a certain manner.
There are increasing numbers of people being taught by completely unqualified people, often in cars that have no L plates and are probably incorrectly insured. No wonder our road fatalities remain on a stubborn trendline of 1,750 a year.
Allowing people to practice with appropriate supervising drivers is a good idea, but what is practised and where must be laid down by an instructor. Appropriate progress must be properly measured. One way would be a specialist ADI conducting tests in urban, rural and fast dual carriageway driving. A night test would also be helpful but doing so in mid summer would present problems. Only then could people apply to take the Ministry test.
The theory test is useless. Students understand neither the question nor the answer. Theory should be a proper college course with periodic tests, a bit like end of term exams, before the pass/fail exam, a bit like the GCSE. Studying the Highway Code is a littlelike memorising a dictionary and imagining that one can speak the language. Such a course would take many weeks on a part time basis with reading and homework and cover the obvious Highway Code issues, but properly contextualised, driving techniques such as limit point cornering and much more. A learner driver version of Roadcraft should be produced. Claiming that the system of police driving is the intellectual property is nonsense. This implies that the police are not interested in training safer drivers. If necessary, governmnent could lean on the police to make the skill available. As it is there to read in Roadcraft, such an argument is absurd.
On the technical side, proper education must cover tyres, brake fluid, coolant, fuel economy, warning lights and ADAS systems. It is no good asking students what the legal tread depth is if they cannot identify the tread and do not know what it does. The same applies to tyre pressures. No mention is made of tread types which is why every time a few flakes of snow fall, the country stops.
Defining a distraction would be good. Putting the phone in the glove box is an idea until it rings through the bluetooth system and a complicated conversation is started. That is as distracting as driving drunk. Understanding how we see is vital. It is the brain that turns visual data captured by the eyes into information. If the brain is otherwise occupied, no processing takes place.
This would certainly drive up costs, so students should be eligible for a student loan to fund it. To suggest that higher costs are a reason to do nothing beyond playing with words is total nonsense. Motor vehicles are lethal machines and anybody driving them should be of the highest calibre. Therefore the thrust needs to be passing only the best rather than finding excuses to allow pretty much everyone behind the wheel. We must recognise that some people are too stupid to drive a car.
The cost argument also extends to the difficulty of finding a national speed limit dual carriageway in a city centre or a remote rural community. Tough. It must be done. It is quite absurd to pass someone on a simple test route, such as Lee on the Solent, and then pretend that they are competent to drive on the M27, 4 miles to the north.
Instructors should be educated to Diploma level so that not only do they have the necessary technical knowledge but also know how to answer seemingly simple questions, such as driving in a straight line. Again, such education should be eligible for a student loan but unlike the current system of only starting payback once a certain salary level has been met, repayments start after qualification. An instructor should have say 3 months to build up a client base and then start repayments. Given that all elements are government controlled, DVSA would simply tell the loan office when an instructor was successful and repayments would be taken by direct debit starting after the initial period was complete.
Punishments must be beefed up. The driving ban should be a suspended sentence served at liberty by means of a ban. Get caught disqualified driving and you go straight to jail. Any subsequent ban would be twice as long as the preceding one, all spent in jail. 3 bans in 10 years means a permanent loss of licence and an automatic 10 year jail sentence if caught driving. Either those who are minded to misbehave will think twice or will be safely incarcerated. Either way, the public is protected.
The extremely long letter clearly covers the need to engage with Driving Associations, Driving Instructors and all related agencies involved in providing a workable system to achieve drivers that are safe on the roads. It is so clear that there are many aspects that need to be addressed and it is key and fundemental that people who are involved in that process should and must be represented as Carly’s letter covered.
Unfortunately having had several attempts to read the letter, my response is that it is far too long winded and far too repetitive to have any impact. This is not a criticism of the content but I feel the message is lost and a far more concise and specific identification of the problem is required.
The DVSA introduced a 7 point plan to solve the Test long waiting list problem. It was reasonably clear in statement but was not and should have been contested before publication as it proved to be a waste of time and totally non affective.
My message to be sent to the Government and DVSA is basically to involve the people who matter and keep the
dialogue short, simple and specific
This is long overdue, whereby decisions are made without proper consultation with ADI’s etc. Fingers crossed not only do they listen to you, but they act on your recommendations.