Driver training

[frankieboy]

Anyone know what the driver training involves, been told that it's 4 hours long, 1 in the office and 3 driving.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Anyone know what the driver training involves, been told that it's 4 hours long, 1 in the office and 3 driving.

Its an assessment rather than training. Basically to make sure you can follow the rules of the road and maneuver the vehicle safely. The indoor bit IIRC is hazard perception.

[Barbel]

Mine was 2 hours long and involved a lot of reversing into parking spaces. He wasn't happy with me at first so out for another 2 hours then I passed.

[Burghboy]

From what I understand you can't fail, they just decide weather your high or low risk!

[Queeg500]

You have a lesson in the office for an hour. Then you're out on the road where you are assessed and given a risk rating. I had to do a driving commentary during the last 30 minutes, which is not as easy as it sounds. It was an incredibly boring 4 hours although I did learn a few bits.

[manboss]

Mine lasted an hour in total, did it this year, consisted of about half an hour driving and then the assessor briefly showing me relevant info on his laptop that I cannot remember what that was, I got the impression the guy was more bothered about getting home!

I've heard of a few people failing, in fact I guy in our office was so bad the assessor had to drive back to the office, does make me wonder if the guy failed it on purpose

[stan_lers]

I went out in one of the huge LDV vans, basically had to drive around town for 40 minutes (during rush hour), showing that I know to go wide around corners to avoid the curb, things like that. Had to pull into a quiet road to do a few manoeuvres. It's not a test and it's probably really hard to fail, more to see if you're capable of driving a van, and if you can drive the biggest van in the DO then you're okay to drive a Bipper or whatever else they use.

[jbbicker]

On the regular vans mine took about 45 minutes. That was 3 years ago though. I recently did my changeover for the transit van and it was dragged out over 4 hours as that's what the trainer/assessor was paid for and he would come in for some stick had he clocked off early. There was no test involved. Just driving and talking about driving with some general small-talk to kill time.