Consider the keys your drivers use today to operate their vehicles. They’re quite different, with more advanced features than the keys used just a decade ago. Just like these keys, your company’s driver safety training needs more advanced features both in the learning objectives covered and the instructional methods used to effectively address safety issues drivers’ struggle with today.
If your training programs have not been updated to mitigate rapidly changing 21st century risk factors, it’s time to reassess your current program along with the results it’s delivering. It may be time for a new set of training keys.
For businesses where driving is part of daily operations, teaching drivers how to drive differently is a key component for success. But in today’s world, it’s important to find training not mired in outdated thinking. The issues facing drivers today differ from what they were just a decade ago.
Fortunately, the potential solutions have advanced, as well. Managers no longer face having to go with one form of training. The best driver training programs combine innovative virtual training, eLearning and behind-the-wheel training that address challenges faced by managers who want to improve driver safety.
Driver Training Challenges for Fleet Managers
No matter what kind of business employs drivers - from heavy-duty haulers to medical sales staff - ways to improve driver training ranks among the biggest priorities. The number of crashes has increased on the nation’s roads, and drivers face not only managing their own behavior but watching out for bad driving behaviors by those around them.
Managers have their own set of issues. They need driver safety training that can:
- Provide flexibility in how drivers learn
- Use technology to broaden what drivers learn
- Engage veteran drivers who have years of experience
- Teach the skills needed to drive in today’s situations, not those from the past
Driving Dynamics addresses those issues and more with a basket of training options that give modern fleets the chance to improve driver safety, reduce risk management and lower cost in a variety of effective ways.
Virtual Instructor-Led Training
VILT replicates an in-person learning workshop in an online environment; with learning content designed and delivered by skilled instructors who are as interactive and effective as well-run, in-person programs. Advanced defensive driving safety techniques can then be further “hard-wired” in follow-up hands-on, behind-the-wheel training sessions with professional safety instructors.
Behind-the-Wheel Training
Behind-the-wheel training consists of practicing maneuvers in a vehicle with an instructor on hand to explain different exercises and oversee how a driver practices them. Through DriveReady™ BTW training, drivers first learn advanced techniques through instructor-led classes. They then apply those lessons to behind-the-wheel exercises. Each lesson is taught in a safe, no contact environment where drivers can focus on employing the key principles they have learned into their driving. This provides much more actual behind-the-wheel time for drivers than a group getting into one vehicle and going out on the road.
These different methods of delivering advanced driver training give fleets flexibility in how they approach the important issue of training. They also ensure that drivers get the latest techniques that are based on analysis of what causes crashes, as well as what has proven successful in avoiding them. These proven methods give fleets a much better way to prepare today’s commercial drivers.
