Fleets and company car, van and truck drivers are being offered remote training to help maintain safety and compliance during the coronavirus pandemic.
As classroom-based fleet courses have been postponed or cancelled, more training companies are moving their offerings online.
Fleet training body the Institute of Car Fleet Management (ICFM) has already announced it would be focussing its training online in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
It said at the time that the safety and wellbeing of its members were of paramount importance and as such all planned training courses involving delegates meeting and travel would cease until September at the earliest.
CPC training providers are also offering drivers remote training to help fill the gap since coronavirus forced the closure of classroom-based courses.
Fleet Source, for example, has gone live with a TV-based training solution across its Driver CPC classroom course offering.
Now, TTC Group is able to deliver its JAUPT (Joint Approvals Unit for Periodic Training) approved Driver CPC courses and core fleet manager courses online in virtual classrooms from Wednesday, April 15.
The three-and-a-half-hour courses offered include: driver hours, driver distractions, driver health and well-being, safe loading, driver safety awareness and driver speed awareness.
All courses will be delivered ‘live’ with expert trainers delivering the courses for up to 12 delegates at a time within a virtual classroom.
The classroom allows each delegate to see, interact with and ask questions of the trainer, and other delegates, as well as viewing and hearing the same content delivered on traditional face-to-face courses.
Some courses will run ‘closed’ for individual companies who just want their drivers to undertake private training, while others will be ‘open’ for any bus, coach or truck driver to book and join in.
A number of its fleet and driver risk management courses will also be delivered online. These 90-minute courses aim to bring managers up to speed with their crucial duty of care responsibilities to the employees when they drive for work.
Jim Kirkwood, CEO of the TTC Group, said: “The business environment has changed out of all recognition and we needed to react quickly. That’s why I’m delighted we can now offer our training using virtual classroom technology.”
SG Fleet UK, meanwhile, is providing free online driver training during the coronavirus lockdown, in partnership with Applied Driving Techniques (ADT).
With many drivers off the road at this time, SG Fleet UK says it felt it was the right time to provide this complimentary service and help improve driver knowledge and understanding of road safety.
Chris Salmon, commercial director at SG Fleet UK, explained: “At SG Fleet, we take the safety of our employees and customers very seriously. By offering these free online ADT driver training courses, we are doing our bit to support those affected in these unprecedented times.”
David Brown, head of business development at ADT, added: “Though under troublesome circumstances, it is commendable to witness how seriously SG Fleet UK is taking road safety. We are proud to support them in our bid to help reduce road deaths by increasing safety for all.”
Figures from E-Training World show that the number of completed online courses has gone up since the start of the lockdown, most likely due to people using their time working from home to carry out e-learning, it says.
The numbers of drivers carrying out online driver profiling and e-driver training has risen in the past two weeks, with numbers logging in increasing by 18%.
Jonathan Mosley, sales and marketing director at E-Training World, said: “Clearly we’re all experiencing extremely tough conditions at the moment but to draw some positives it’s good to see that many drivers are using this time to complete their online profiling and training.
“It appears from our system stats that drivers are focusing some of their time at home to complete as many modules as they can, which is good news for employers if drivers return to the road safer and more aware.”
E-Training World’s systems cater for small vans, large vans, HGVs, PCVs and minibuses, and the company also offers an integrated grey fleet management system to remove all of the time-consuming administration of managing driver and vehicle documentation, and compliance.