The MSA and Scotland proved excellent hosts for the 2015 EFA Congress, which ran from October 8-9 at the Westerwood Hotel, near Glasgow. Delegates were drawn from all across Europe, with over 20 nations represented to hear presentations and addresses on a number of key pan-European road safety and driver training/ testing issues.
The event highlighted how, despite the many languages spoken and different driver training and testing programmes followed, the European Union has a universal continent-wide blight in that road deaths are stubbornly refusing to fall further, and that young and inexperienced drivers are still over-represented in the ranks of those killed or seriously injured in cars.
It was a point made well by the opening session speaker Patrice Bessone, the president of CNPA Education Routiére in France. He ran through the current French system, which required initial training in theory followed by a minimum of 20 hours driving practice. A probationary period for new drivers of two-three years, during which the driver could lose no more than six points on their licence, was seen as a way of improving standards. CNPA was also keen to push post-test training and further exams: there was a general recognition in France that the initial L-test would never prepare the new driver for life on the road.
France also struggled with the same distractions as the rest of Europe, particularly phone use and tiredness, and has looked into ways to curb risk-taking.
Paul Helbing, assistant chief driving examiner at the DVSA, used his time to outline the L-test trial that so many MSA members are currently engaged with. European observers were clearly taken by the bold initiative of using sat navs on test and it was obvious that many were left thinking of ways to push for similar strategies back home. Some of the overseas delegates were somewhat surprised by the news that one of the key constraints for the DVSA had been to find a way to implement reform without a need to make regulatory changes – what were politicians for if not to regulate, seemed to be the sense of the room – but that peculiar quirk of the current British political scene notwithstanding, there was considerable interest in the post-trial data analysis. Success, Paul said, would be drivers better equipped to handle distractions on the road and a reduction in incidents within the first six months of driving after passing the L-test.
The UK’s lead in European theory testing and its use of digitalised graphics for testing was also on display, with widespread approval of the new Hazard Perception Test CGI films. The CGI allowed for all possible driving scenarios to be explored, and the DVSA had plans to introduce an even wider range of clips featuring vulnerable road users in the future.
The next step would be to explore the use of short clips to support case studies in multiple choice tests, concentrating initially on scenarios that include issues such as level crossings. The DVSA was also looking into making the HPT a ‘journey’, where candidates are asked questions ‘before setting out’ and en route. Road safety in Scotland was going ‘back to the future’ said Michael McDonnell, director, Road Safety Scotland, as he looked at local issues surrounding young drivers’ lifelong learning. He outlined the country’s strategies and targets from 2000-2010 and how the political landscape was impacting on Scottish road safety issues. A Road Safety Framework to 2020 had been produced that was built on strong partnership engagements, with eight priorities. One for Michael was that road safety had to be seen in the context of lifelong learning – with a very young starting point, as a core part of the schools’ national curriculum.
He quoted the United Nations statement on the importance of teaching effective road safety at an early age: “To be effective, road safety education shall be provided on a systematic and continuous basis in pre-school establishments, primary and secondary school, within out of school activities and places of further education.”
He was determined that throughout their schooling, every young person in Scotland would have access to appropriate road safety education resources, with information designed by teachers for teachers to use in classrooms.
He also stressed the role of parents as ‘teachers’: “Every time a parents gets behind the wheel with a child present, they are having a driving lesson”. Michael added the words …“that could save their life in future” to that sentence, but as the audience acknowledged, the opposite could also be true, with children’s storing up negative experiences of poor driving which they would revert to later in their lives.
As one slide put it: “Daddy thinks green is for go and amber is for speed up…” while another featured an angry mum and the legend in child’s writing: “Mummy goes bleep, bleep in the car…”
Kari Hakuli, president, CIECA – The International Commission for Driver Testing, offered delegates a glimpse at the future, with an emphasis on what he saw as Europe’s key challenges of an older driving population, a greater need for environmental awareness and the way new technology was going to be introduced to driving. There were three ‘future megatrends’, he said: digitalisation, the sharing economy and automatisation of vehicles, and he was keen to establish a systematic approach to new vehicle technology. He highlighted the challenges posed by bringing more automation into vehicles, suggesting that the complexity of road traffic and the interactions that existed between various components meant that huge co-operation was needed across many sectors to bring such systems in safely.
He saw a future where the drivers’ role would change from one of controlling the vehicle to managing the systems and supervision, and as a result driver education and testing regimes would have to adapt accordingly – as would legislation.
Ed Passant, chief executive, Driving Mobility Forum, took as his theme driving assessments for disabled and older people and the development of a European standard. The prevalence of disability was striking: around 17 per cent of the UK population had a limiting long-term illness, impairment or disability, and the prevalence of disability rises sharply with age – an important consideration when you consider Europe’s current ageing population. There was balance needed between granting disabled drivers freedom to travel and empowering them, while keeping these goals in line with road safety.
In a European context, he acknowledged a wide variation of available resources and processes in assessing fitness to drive. There were also sharp differences in the restrictions placed on driving licences and the conditions that triggered medical assessments and licence removal. This was a challenge that would have to be tackled.
Professor Marco Pierini of the University of Florence’s Dept of Industrial Engineering, took as his theme the scientific and technical innovations for safety on powered two wheelers (PTW). Europe had seen an increase in PTWs, with people attracted to them as they help ease the impact of congestion in urban areas and as a response to varying charging schemes and bans on cars in city centres.
But for all their attractiveness, PTWs are 25-35 times more vulnerable than cars. Big efforts had been made to improve PTWs’ braking systems and traction control to prevent skidding, but still the figures showed higher risks for riders. The professor wanted to create a holistic and integrated approach to PTW safety that would pull together academia, the PTW industry, training schools and other stakeholders and create a joint PTW road safety roadmap. New recommendations were needed for the design of innovative and efficient testing methods for new riders, while roads needed to be re-engineered to add more rider-friendly passive and active safety measures.
At the core of any future developments, however, had to be rider behaviour: it was vital Europe defined criteria and introduced testing that investigated rider behaviour in different riding scenarios and introduced more PTW training, possibly through simulators, to characterise the links between psychology and riding actions.
The MSA was formed 80 years ago as an adjunct to the new driving test introduced at the same time by the Government, and while this linkage won’t be news to any MSA members, it was obviously the start of a fascinating journey through history for EFA delegates, as told by MSA chairman Peter Harvey and general manager John Lepine.
From its earliest pre-test days through to the current time, the MSA has been there to set a standard of professional and ethical behaviour for members and to represent them on a personal level as well as industry-wide. John and Peter took delegates on a whistle-stop tour of the major developments, from the introduction of the test to the end of hand signals, the introduction of manoeuvres to their gradual phasing out of today, and the rise of HPT.
The conference was brought to a close as far as the formal presentations were concerned by Dr Berhandard Reiter, the CEO the Driving Instructors Academy of Germany.
Dr Reiter explained that his organisation was the oldest trainer of driving instructors in Germany. It was an intense training programme, which took place at the organisation’s residential headquarters where students had to learn motoring law, traffic behaviour, driver psychology and the social aspects of driving, particularly risk awareness.
‘PDIs’ even learn construction and operation of the vehicle and its parts, as well as study its impact on the environment and the complex relationship between vehicle, technology, the environment and road safety. The final qualification comes after a practical driving test followed by an examination of technical knowledge and one teaching sample, of either a theoretical module or practical driving lesson. There are also written tests on traffic behaviour, motoring law, risk assessment, technique and traffic education. The process takes five months and costs around 7,000 Euros – though funding opportunities were available through regional and central Government schemes.
This article appears in the November issue of Newslink
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