Legal expert Alan Scott-Davies investigates the training and qualification levels required of fleet driver trainers.

At virtually all of the legal presentations I give the focus from the company is mainly on improving fleet driver training and preventing accidents which lead to corporate litigation.

The role of the fleet driver is well-defined; they are on the front-line representing the company, delivering goods across the country, in highly visible vehicles.

Fleet Driver Trainers have a very different role in that they are waiting for the inevitable accident report whilst carefully managing a rolling programme of ongoing training. This clearly requires a high level of skill, qualifications, and experience on different vehicle types.

This naturally led me to ask the question of “What qualifications are needed to be a Fleet Driver Trainer?” The process of recruiting Fleet Driver Trainers should be designed to get the right person, with the right qualifications, and the relevant experience on the type of vehicles used by the company.

• Do you need to have qualified as an Approved Driving Instructor before you can proceed to the next stage?
• What if you are a former police traffic officer, with 27 years of experience in one role, but you are not an ADI and you have no experience of teaching?
• What if you are an ADI, with many years of experience of teaching, but have never driven anything larger than a car?
• Do Fleet Driver Trainers need to have a qualification on the specific type of vehicle they will be assessing their colleagues on?

Part of the answer to these questions can be found on the Gov.uk website where advice is provided on becoming a fleet driver trainer. It states that you need to be an ADI to join the voluntary register and to qualify you have to either:

• Pass three qualifying tests or
• Take a training course.

On completion of this you can join the register where your details will be given to people looking for fleet driver training. You can also advertise yourself as a DVSA registered fleet driver trainer with the registration lasting for 4 years.

That all looks straightforward – difficult I’m sure but it doesn’t address the question of ‘experience on the type of vehicle’ potential employers are looking for. Do prospective employers even ask the question?

I suspect that there are companies that will employ Fleet Driver Trainers without this DVSA approved qualification and many will come from a mix of those professions highlighted above including just those very experienced drivers who might hold an advanced driving qualification like RoSPA or I.A.M.

I don’t know the answers to all these questions but I suspect that regular followers of my Blogs will fire back at me which is what I am looking for.

There is no doubt that Fleet Driver Trainers have a difficult role. They need to be able to fulfil the aims and objectives of their employers whilst building up trust and respect with the drivers that they are assessing.

So why is this of any relevance to a lawyer and why am I writing about it?

Well I can tell you with certainty that if a fleet driver is involved in a road traffic incident in which a third-party sustained injuries, and there is an allegation that the fleet driver was negligent, then lawyers are going to be looking at a number of issues including:

1. What experience did the fleet driver have on the vehicle they were driving?
2. Do they have a history of accidents and, if so, in what period of time did they occur?
3. Do the accidents have a pattern relating to their lifestyle including medical issues for example.
4. What action, if any, was taken by the driver’s employer if there had been previous incidents?
5. What training had that fleet driver received in the past 12 months?
6. What was the outcome of that last driving assessment?
7. What qualifications and experience does the Fleet Driver Trainer have?

If there is a weak-link in the chain relating to the Fleet Driver Trainers then lawyers acting for the third-party are going to find it, highlight it, and exploit it in any subsequent litigation.

In the legal sense employers are vicariously liable for the ‘acts and omissions’ of all their employees. Is it therefore worth making sure that Fleet Driver Trainers have the right qualifications and experience?

What do you think?