Have thoughts on what training new drivers to the industry should have?

well, while i would completely disagree with the "aggressive driving" label, there is a safety issue to telling a newbie not to shift in a turn. not sure if that applied to you in your example, but missing a gear while going through an intersection can be far more dangerous, and an impediment to traffic, than going through at a snail's pace. as a trainer, id tell students the same thing...dont shift in the turn, even though toward the end of training when i was confident in their ability to shift correctly every time, that might very well change. if a safety guy was observing an experienced driver, im at a loss as to why he would consider it a huge deal.

the truck stop issue,GAH!!!!! i hate that too. also hate those that want to go 20 mph...happy medium somewhere in there.

and the alcohol issue i completely disagree with you and most states. while the EFFECTS should be taught, there should be no emphasis placed on how much to drink. the answer to "how much to drink" should be simple...NONE. if i were king, and the technology were good enough to tell beyond reasonable doubt, id start arresting people at .02. the penalties would be FAR more severe for offenders...1 strike "leniency"...only 60 days in jail and a $5000 fine. 2 strike mandatory 1 yr prison and lose license forever. and total abolition of "vehicular manslaughter" with regards to dui driving...replaced with at least murder 2 and 10 years in prison.

 

Require a short-term apprenticeship as in many other trades

 

I agree that coaching involves a skill set which is fairly simple to learn. I completely disagree that coaching is analogous to teaching. Coaching is like teaching the same way bird watching is like being a biologist. They both involve a similar focus and skill set, but one is worlds away from the other in terms of the number of people who are actually qualified to pull it off.

We don't need more coaches, we've already got plenty. What we need are teachers. If instructors and trainers were required to have a background in the fundamentals of teaching, the safety record and the turn over rates would improve dramatically in this industry. Which brings us to this:

Actually its pretty easy to believe. All of the big companies base their profit models around having the majority of their driver pool working at the bottom end of the pay scale. In order to do that, you need most of them to quit or get fired before they're with the company long enough to make it very far up the pay scale. Keeping them under educated accomplishes this quite nicely.

Of course it also leads to lots of accident and incident reports. But since most of the big guys self-insure, it all works out.

Which is what I was alluding to in my earlier post. The mega carriers rule this industry. And the mega carriers don't really want drivers who are well trained because that screws up their business model. So the DOT can look at this issue all they like, but the mega carriers have far too much influence to allow any meaningful changes to ever take place on this front.

 

Its sad how right you are.

 

Someone started a post for legislators to 'assist' legislators in making new legislation. Wow.

You know, when I took my driving test for a car, I had to show my birth certificate. I had to demonstrate that I had control of the car. Had to be able to read road signs and traffic, had to be able to show that I could use the mirrors and parallel park within 10 inches from the curb. Now, the only thing motorist have to do is drive around the block, and park in between the lines. They dumbed down the requirements for the dummies that want to drive. And if you are Mexican, you do not need identification of any kind to go to the DMV and get a license. After all, driving is a right, right?

They put elogs in trucks for all you guys who couldnt figure out how to manage time. They instituted the dumb and dumber program to train drivers. They govern your trucks because you cant control the truck. They route you because you cant figure out that the shortest distance is a straight line. They have you thinking Arby's is a five star restaurant. They put your name with a star by it in the quarterly news letter when you sit in Texas during the summer and dont idle your truck.

You cant drive. You cant read a map. You cant think for yourself. You cant agree. You cant go home. You cant tell me what engine is in your truck. You cant plan. You cant read traffic conditions. You cant make any decisions. You cant take a shower unless someone else tells you that you smell. You cant remember if you wiped or not.

You can barely operate a car safely. But because they dumbed everything down in trucking, your dumb self is now qualified to operate a commercial motor vehicle. Then they tell you to drive safely. If you dont know how to drive and you dont cant make decisions, how on earth are you supposed to be a safe driver?

 

I hear ya. I have had some guys who just do not want to listen or learn.
All they think about is how much money they can make.

I have been in this for 30 years and have some guys i trained do very well with my instructions and are still driving today.
So i don't feel it is my instruction to blame....some guys find out that driving is not the gravy job they thought it would be.

And no matter what methods i try some trainees are just not into learning it! Of course i fail them and they can go back to the factory job or whatever they had before that took no mental effort to do.

My point was these "trainers" with only a few months experience have no business teaching others.
This is a job that you learn over years not days or weeks.

 

In this business, yeah that's probably a good thing. But not for the reason you would suspect.

If you look at the military, you will find that it isn't unusual at all for students to be trained by instructors who were students themselves only a few months or years earlier. They do it all the time and they are quite successful with it. But there is a very important difference. The military understands that no one is qualified to teach anything to others until that person has been taught how to teach. So they use a very finely tuned program to train instructors in the military method of teaching That method makes heavy use of a very structured program with a specific curriculum, i.e. in this portion of the program x will be taught and it will be taught in this specific way.

The military makes heavy use of this and they are very successful with it. It is not usual for military pilots to be taught how to fly by instructors who didn't know how to fly themselves just a few years earlier. And yet, military pilots are considered to be among best trained and safest in the air.

So it CAN be done. I'm not saying it should be done. But it could be, its not impossible. My point is that right now, in many segments of the industry, there is no requirement for trainers or instructors to understand anything at all about teaching methods. Nothing. In some states, the only requirement to be certified as a CDL driving instructor is to have held a license for a certain amount of time and take a fairly simple written test which anyone who reads the CDL handbook a couple of times could pass.

Many companies, including my company, pick their trainers much the same way. Frank seems like a smart guy, he's been a good employee and he seems pretty knowledgable and responsible so we'll send the new hires out with him so he can show them the ropes. Absolutely no consideration is ever given to whether or not Frank understands anything at all about the methods of teaching. That is something that ought to change IMO.