Van drivers' toolkit designed to end 'I don't know' as excuse for breaking the law

National Highways is trying to take away the ‘I don’t know’ excuse from commercial vehicle drivers breaking the law by producing a new van driver toolkit.

“Most van drivers don’t think they’re commercial vehicle drivers, they think they’re plumbers, or civil engineers or gas fitters, so we need to get the message across that they are commercial vehicle drivers,” said Mark Cartwright (pictured), head of the commercial vehicle incident prevention team at National Highways.

“One of the first things they say when I chat to them is ‘I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to stick three-and-a-half tonnes in the back of my 3.5t van. I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to be doing 80mph on the phone in the outside lane of the motorway’.

“One of the big projects we have just rolled out are our van driver toolkits and fundamentally these exist to take away the ‘I’m sorry mate, I didn’t know’ excuse.” These can be found at www.vandrivertoolkit.co.uk and are designed to help fleet operators reduce costs, improve operating conditions, ensure safe and legal vehicles and promote well-being for drivers.

Cartwright said they cover 35 subject matters, such as how to make sure vehicles are roadworthy, what the speed limits are, how to load vans properly, what driver hours are, etc.

“On the web page you’ll find an HTML version of the driver info card for each topic,” he said.

“Print ready files are also on there. They’re very punchy, they’re very direct and to the point.

“We’ll also be uploading some readymade toolbox talks in a week or so’s time.

“The next stage is we are going to find a very competent driver trainer to record some video courses, so as a business if you don’t fancy doing the toolbox talk yourselves, you can use these instead.”

Cartwright said National Highways will be launching a complete e-learning package in around six-months’ time, and this will include a series of short videos which should earn CPC credits.

He added: “The more people we can get these resources to, the more chance we have of making an impact.

The Van Driver Toolkit insight can also be found at the Commercial Fleet tool.