IMTD June Meeting

I was able to attend the IMTD June meeting a few days ago and as always it was great to meet up with old friends and colleagues.

Those present heard a fascinating presentation on New & Emerging Technologies by Iain Knight – Director & Principal Engineer of Apollo Vehicle Safety Ltd who gave details of the many and varied pieces of equipment now being used to make driver/vehicles safer including Electronic Stability Control, Lane Departure Warning, Forward Collision Warning and Autonomous Emergency Braking. He also talked about Autonomous Emergency Steer (AES) which is designed to help prevent head-on and run-off road collisions. He concluded his fascinating address with a look at the Autonomous Car Timeline, in other words when are driver trainers likely to be made redundant? Iain suggested our jobs might be looking a bit dodgy by 2045.

IMTD member Ian Green of A1 Coaching Solutions and of Central Driver Training gave a presentation entitled The Two Second Rule which was not about what you might think. Ian is a qualified NLP coach and he was relating the two second rule with regards to telling the truth he told us that when asked a question we should always wait two full seconds before we answer as the time will allow us to be honest to ourselves.

At one point in his presentation Ian asked for a volunteer and I was persuaded to step forward. Unfortunately I’m not really into the concept of Life Coaches, I think my notion of them was somewhat blighted by Carole Caplin, so I don’t think I was a great help. Ian told us that some of the most successful people in the world employ a life coach and one member pointed out that Richard Branson apparently has two. There was some discussion about whether or not the coaching helped Branson, some thought it was the secret of his success others were less convinced. A fascinating subject presented by long time MSA member Ian.

The final presentation was by MSA National Chairman Peter Harvey MBE on the Cat B test review most readers of this blog will be familiar with the work Peter has done on this subject but Peter had up to the minute information about the trial that I was unaware off including the current information on how many ADIs and candidates are involved as well as the total amount of tests taken in the trial so far. He highlighted the  three new DTCs have been added to the twenty test centres currently being used for the trial, Bedford, Bournemouth and Ipswich, and suggested if anyone in these areas wanted to take part in the trial, it was not too late.

All in all a very interesting morning.