Let‘s Talk Fleet Risk

Show notes

Simon Turner is joined in this podcast by Mark Cartwright from Highways England.

Mark was previously at the Freight Transport Association where he was head of vans and light commercial vehicles, and was the brains behind the van excellence programme.

He now brings over 30 years of experience to Highways England as head of their Commercial Vehicle Incident Prevention Team.

In this podcast I talk to Mark about the lack of awareness among some van drivers and operators of their obligations – specifically around issues like overloading and vehicle maintenance.

We discuss why some van operators seem to think the rules don’t apply to them and various ways they and their drivers can get caught out.

We talk about the new resources that Mark’s team have developed in collaboration with DfBB to tackle driver wellbeing and driver communication challenges.

And finally we talk about the new Euro NCAP van safety ratings and why van operators should be demanding safer vehicles for their drivers.

https://www.drivingforbetterbusiness.com/podcast/episode/van-drivers-and-van-operators-training-resources/

Useful Links:

Highways England resources for commercial vehicle operators and drivers

https://www.drivingforbetterbusiness.com/resources/search-results/?category=CVIP

DfBB Resources: Loading and load security

https://www.drivingforbetterbusiness.com/resources/search-results/?section=325&category=Load%20Security

CALM Driver

https://www.drivingforbetterbusiness.com/calmdriver/

DfBB Van Driver Toolkit

https://www.drivingforbetterbusiness.com/van-driver-toolkit/

Euro NCAP Van Safety Ratings

https://www.drivingforbetterbusiness.com/articles/how-safe-are-your-vans/

https://www.euroncap.com/en/vehicle-safety/safety-campaigns/2021-commercial-van-safety/

Transcript

Simon: Welcome to Let’s Talk Fleet Risk, a podcast for those who manage drivers and their vehicles and want to reduce road risk in their organisation.

I’m Simon Turner and I’m the Campaign Manager for Driving for Better Business, and I’m joined today by Mark Cartwright from Highways England. Mark was previously at the Freight Transport Association, where he was Head of Vans and Light Commercial Vehicles, and where he was the brains behind the Van Excellence programme. He now brings over 30 years of experience to Highways England as Head of their Commercial Vehicle Incident Prevention Team. In this podcast, I talk to Mark about the lack of awareness among some van drivers and operators about their obligations, and specifically around issues like overloading and vehicle maintenance. We discuss why some van operators seem to think the rules don’t apply to them, and the various ways that both they and their drivers can get caught out. Then we talk about the new resources that Mark’s team have developed in collaboration with Driving for Better Business to tackle driver wellbeing and driver communication challenges. And finally, we talk about the new Euro NCAP van safety ratings, and why van operators should be demanding safer vehicles for their drivers.

Simon: Hi Mark, welcome to the show.

Mark: Hi Simon.

Simon: Mark, you’ve obviously got years of experience with commercial vehicles – perhaps we could start by just talking a little bit about your role with Highways England – what does that entail and where’s your main focus at the moment?

Mark: Thanks Simon. It’s an interesting role, I guess, the job title, Head of Commercial Vehicle Incident Prevention really tells you all you need to know – it’s very much a ‘does what it says on the can’ kind of role. I guess in terms of our activities and our focus, the team has always had quite a focus on heavy commercial vehicles, on trucks and in particular their condition on the road, their roadworthiness, the state of their loading, etcetera. And we’re keeping going in that, because clearly that’s an important area for us, but we’re moving more and more of a focus onto light commercial vehicles, and as part and parcel of that, looking at how we influence the behaviours of drivers and their managers to be doing the right thing on the road.

Simon: There’s obviously a huge amount of more vans on the road than there are trucks so that seems like a sensible direction to take, to focus more on the light commercials, as well. What are the main problems you see with those?

Mark: Yeah right, I mean just in terms of numbers around four and a half million vans on the road at the moment compared to probably somewhere in the region of 420,000 trucks so you know, you don’t need to think too long and hard to realise there’s an area of activity there for us.

The work that we’ve been doing, I guess the first thing to say is Highways England has no enforcement powers, so we’re working with our colleagues in enforcement on trying to influence the behaviours of the drivers and managers I mentioned, but to be honest, most of the issues that we find are pretty straightforward stuff.

So there’s a degree of frustration that we find these issues, but I guess there’s an understanding that with the right attitudes they’re actually fairly easy things to fix. So we see overloading – there’s an ongoing lack of awareness, it seems, that the capacity of light commercial vehicles isn’t down to just how much you can actually get on the back, and there are weight limits involved. We see issues around the security of those loads, which of course, given what we do, is a big concern for us. But we also see the kind of road worthiness issues which frankly ought to be being picked up by any kind of cursory pre-use check of the vehicle, before we even get to it. That tells me that, by and large, there’s quite a lack of awareness within drivers and the operators as to the very basics of operating commercial vehicles. A statistic which is quite interesting, I’m sure many of our listeners will be aware of this, is the first-time MOT failure rate on vans is around just shy of 50%. So that’s a vehicle which has been sent in to be checked over – now most of the things that these vans are failing their MOTs on are the kind of thing I’ve mentioned. They’re turning up for an MOT with dodgy tyres or with bulbs that aren’t working, lights that aren’t working, windscreen wipers, all that kind of stuff. And there are all the kinds of things that ought to be picked up by even the most straightforward of pre-use checks on vehicles. So, again, I guess that kind of supports our view that if the vans aren’t being checked the day before they’re going in for their MOT, I’m pretty sure they haven’t been checked on any of the other 364 days that are available to them. So, very frustrating, but the reality of it is, if we can change attitudes, it’s pretty easy to fix.

Simon: With vehicle checks then, do you think it’s part of the problem people just not doing checks, or are they just not doing them often enough?

Mark: I think there are two areas of it, to be honest, I mean one, there’s this lack of awareness that I speak about. And to be honest, I think most of the time it is genuinely a lack of awareness – you know, we see vans being operated by businesses who are very health and safety conscious, very good at managing their health and safety in the primary areas of their business. Whether they be, you know, in the building trades, civil engineers, landscapers, scaffolders, you know, whatever. They’re very good at managing the health and safety, away from the vehicle, but it doesn’t necessarily seem to translate to the vehicle operation which again is, is frustrating but it’s something that, you know, we can address. So I think there’s a lack of awareness in there. The other issue in the van space, with pre-use checks I think, is just the logistics of doing it. In the truck world, a piece of paper served perfectly well for many operators for many, many years – you know, the driver takes some form, fills out the form, hands it in at the gate or the traffic office or whatever. And it’s dealt with as it needs to be dealt with. The problem with vans, or the issue with vans, is a good 80% of them – in our estimation – live outside of somebody’s house so it’s all very well carrying out the check on a piece of paper for example, but what happens to that piece of paper after. So you know we’ve become a big fan of pre-use defect checks apps over the last couple of years because they literally get around that issue of delivering the report from where the vehicle is to the individual that can make the decision as to what happens next

Simon: With the main reasons for MOT failures I think one of the biggest is typically wheel or tyre related, and brake related, which are, you know… tyres are obviously something that should be picked up on a pre-use defect check but when you link that with what you said previously about loading issues that makes it doubly critical doesn’t it?

Mark: Oh absolutely and, you know, I know it’s probably a statement of the blindingly obvious