With a quarter of the calendar year completed, Digital Tachograph courses are leading the Driver CPC popularity stakes at Driver Hire Training. Over the first three months and going forward, well over 250 courses have either completed or booked.
It would seem it’s certainly an area on which some operators need to improve as a couple of recent cases in the South East show. One company based in Faversham failed to download any data for four years. In fact it only got around to purchasing the download equipment in 2016 and still hadn’t completed any downloads by the time of its hearing in March. In a similar case, the London Borough of Croydon failed to carry out any downloads for a ten month period.
Commenting on both these cases, Nick Denton, Traffic Commissioner for London and the South East, said: “I’m concerned about the culture of downloading digital data across the industry. These cases illustrate the problem most acutely. Both operators abandoned their responsibilities for considerable periods of time. How could they possibly know whether their drivers were working legally and safely?”
Driver Hire’s Chief Executive, Chris Chidley, added: “We know from the training we’ve delivered that many drivers and operators don’t understand Digital Tachographs as well as they should. We’re pleased to see people in the industry taking a responsible line and investing in this area. We would encourage others to do the same, and taking the training as part of the ongoing Driver CPC obligation makes a lot of sense.”