Students Get Lesson in HGV Driving

Late last week some 800 students were able to partake in HGV training in Lincolnshire. However, this wasn’t your normal training session. Rather than adult students learning how to drive an HGV, this training was focused on pupils in classes 7 to 10 at Tollbar Academy in New Waltham.

The exercise was intended to give the children the hands-on experience of seeing what it was like to sit inside the cab of an HGV. According to principal Steve Moon, a large percentage of the school’s pupils cycle to and from school every day. The short amount of training they received will hopefully make them aware of how difficult it is for them to be seen by HGV drivers.

According to Moon, the opportunity to step inside the cab of the truck gave each pupil an understanding of what a driver can, and cannot, see as he/she navigates narrow urban roads. Many of the students said they have a new respect for the big lorries and those who drive them.

The exercise at Tollbar Academy is not the first of its kind. In fact, they have been popping up all over thanks to a renewed interest in promoting road safety among both cyclists and HGV drivers. The pupils at Tollbar were just the latest to receive the introductory training.

Another program held this past spring in London approached the problem from a different perspective: they put HGV drivers on bicycles and had them ride alongside the trucks they normally drive. It was an exercise that allowed them to see what it’s like for the cyclists trying to navigate streets alongside much larger vehicles.

A third safety initiative now being undertaken is a concerted effort in London to ticket careless drivers of both HGVs and bicycles. Authorities want to target both groups in order to drive home the message that road safety is the responsibility of everyone on the road, not just operators of large commercial vehicles.

At the HGV Training Centre, one of our jobs is to train drivers in the safest ways to operate commercial vehicles on public roads. We teach them things like:

• how to use mirrors to maximum advantage
• how to avoid potential hazards
• how to safely back up and pull away
• how to modify driving according to weather conditions.

We believe it is the responsibility of every operator, whether he or she received their HGV training in Lincolnshire or elsewhere, to always drive using the best practices of road safety. We also believe it is our responsibility to teach those practices to every student that comes through our doors.

The HGV Training Centre provides comprehensive driver training for many vehicle types, including horseboxes and horsebox trailers, articulated lorries, vans, coaches and buses, and even forklifts. We are one of the most recognised and respected training facilities in the UK due to our expertise and outstanding track record. We encourage you to contact us whether you need individual or fleet training services.