Ride Drive > Website Links

We all start our driving careers in the same way. A series of lessons with a professional instructor, and if we are lucky, some practice in between times with mum or dad. However, due to the cost of insurance, few can afford the luxury. Therefore it has to be professional driving tuition.

Comes the day of the driving test we gather together all the best parts of our ability based on learning to display all that we are worth to the examiner.

If we are successful, what then? Now there is no safety net. This is where the reality of driving begins. No longer do we have someone sitting next to us to advise and to guide if we meet with a situation that is beyond our experience.

There are no dual controls to override what we are doing and so prevent us from driving into doom. However, slowly but surely, we make out way in the motoring world, like a new born ducking exploring the pond for the first time and alone.

What is remarkable is that with growing confidence we develop our own style of driving, quickly dumping most of what we were given duing our learner driving tuition.

Mimmicking Other Drivers

We start picking up pointers from our elders and our peers, as well as watching how others do it. At this stage we are not experienced or knowledgeable enough to decide what is good or what is bad. We just do things, and as long as it works out, we will carry on doing them.

The experience we gain, and the processes we adopt as our own, become our driving habit. This follows form, because as animals, human beings exist on habit, as do many other animals. After all, it is our habitual way of going about life.

The way we make a cup of coffee, take our socks off, wash the dishes and put on our coats is controlled by habit. We recognise this in each other more so than in ourselves and can even identify others we know at a distance through recognising their habits.

Modus Operandi, is a term used in courts of law and in criminal investigations, and describes the recognised method a criminal uses to commit a crime. In other words, it is his or her habit and this can give them away.

Why do we do Things by Habit?

There are two main reasons that can be put forward as an answer to that question,

Human beings are intrinsically lazy and using a repetitive method of performing tasks requires little thought or effort. In other words it is easy.

Habit is comfortable and to break habit is not. If ever you wanted to gain proof of that look at the embarking upon a restricted diet as an example.

Diets, by the way, nearly always begin on Monday and very rarely last beyond the following Thursday. This is because even the way in which we eat is driven by habit. The brain is comfortable with habit and prefers us to follow familiar behaviours.

Driving Bad Habits

When people settle into driving they work their cars and travel the road environment by habit. The way in which steering is applied, resting the left foot on the clutch, holding the gear lever between gear changes and therefore steering with one hand. The slouched seating position, the elbow on the window ledge. This is all habit.

We said earlier that habit remains habit because habit is comfortable. Therefore, bad habits are comfortable, because it’s what we are used to doing.

This makes bad drivers are content with what they do and how they do it even if what they do can be classed a wrong or even hazardous. They know no better, but they are comfortable.

Being comfortable with a method of executing a procedure or procedures will make us all too ready to defend what we do if our actions are questioned. After all, changing habit is uncomfortable and the brain doesn’t like uncomfortable. Therefore, the brain will urge us to carry on doing what is comfortable and this is why bad drivers will deny they are just that and do so assertively.

Reluctant to Change

No one who is comfortable with the way they drive is ever going to agree they need to change, not as long as when they get in their cars and drive, they always get to where they want to go.

What about the driver who’s journey comprises of a series of near misses? It may surprise the more capable drivers to learn that even a driver who lurches from one crisis to another along the road can be completely comfortable with it.

This is because the way they drive, and the events that happen whilst they do, happen so often the process has become normal. They know no different, but would they accept they are lacking in ability? Of course not, or at least unlikely.

Even when and if the poor driver becomes involved in a Road Traffic Collision, so protective are they of anything that may bring about change to their driving style they will defend their actions vehemently. They are comfortable with what they do and changing to something else is not a motion that is appreciated.

Yes, human beings are intrinsically lazy and this actually makes them stupid. This inability to accept change, as change means breaking a well rehearsed and comfortable habit, often leads us to our doom. It is also the reason why less than one percent of the motoring population will be likely to voluntarily consider any form of further driver training.

The Company Fleet Driver

However, this is not just the private car driver referred to here, but all drivers of all types of vehicles.

On any given working day, three–quarters of all vehicles on the road are being driven by someone who is performing that task as part of their employment role.

It needn’t be foronly those driving company owned vehicles, as more and more working drivers are driving cars, vans and other forms of transport, that actually belong to themselve, but driving in connection with paid work.

When driving on behalf of an employer a driver places certain responsibilities upon that employer. Every working driver, for example, should be properly assessed to determine the level of liability they represent when driving on the road.

Those who are assessed as representing a high level of risk should be required to attend a driver training course so as to get that risk under control.

Most UK Companies Break the Law

It is estimated that more than three–quarters of company vehicle operators, combined with those who employ drivers with their own vehicles, have no risk assessment or corporate driver training programme in place. That is 75% of UK based businesses that are breaking the law.

The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 makes it clear that all employee drivers need to be properly assessed for risk, and where appropriate, provided with adequate training.

The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 places the responsibility for following the provisions of the 1999 Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations onto individuals who are in a position of office to bring about the assessment and driver training process.

If, following a fatality that occurs to an employee driving in connection with his or her employment, it is determined there was a failure by an individual to execute his or her duties under Health and Safety at Work Regulations, that individual can be punished by the courts. That punishment can even amount to a custodial sentence.

Gone are the days when it was the case that anyone within a corporate organisation who held a full driving licence could be asked at the drop of a hat to drive a vehicle. Employers have to realise they are required to look at all their vehicle driving staff and subject them all to a proper process of Driver Risk Assessments.