Training firm Drive & Survive has released statistics collected over a year which reveal some surprising findings.
Between July 2004 and July 2005, 16% of the 641 booked training sessions could not go ahead because the car had illegal tyres.
More than 40% of sessions were aborted because the trainee failed to turn up and 4.6% were halted because the vehicle’s lights did not work.
Trainers stopped 1.55% of sessions because the brakes were faulty and 2.3% of trainees failed a basic eyesight test.
Driver & Survive marketing manager Steve Johnson said commercial organisations were increasingly sinking cash into driver risk management programmes, which made it all the more surprising that so much of that budget was being wasted. He said: ‘Worryingly, three sessions during the period were stopped as a result of the driver being under the influence of drink or drugs and a further two because the driver was so tired he was in danger of falling asleep behind the wheel, despite having the trainer alongside him at the time.
‘Although some of these statistics may be surprising to many in the industry, you must remember that this is just a snapshot of those who have undertaken on-road training with us in the past year or so.
‘Based on our findings, if 16% of all fleet vehicles in the UK are running around with illegal tyres, we are talking about some 480,000 vehicles which might not be able to stop effectively, particularly in the wet.
‘We should all be very concerned about the potential size of this problem.’
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