Preparing the CDL Driver: What Training Should be Required?
If you have proof that certain training courses can guarantee that a driver will be able to drive better and avoid crashes, then the federal government needs you to help them mandate a new set of mandatory training requirements.
For over 30 years, the USDOT has tried unsuccessfully to connect training to outcomes to satisfy Congressional and safety advocacy group efforts to require entry level CDL seekers to have a combination of written and behind-the-wheel training as a way to prepare them to drive big rigs or motor coaches. After all, shouldn’t mandatory training be a “no-brainer” so that new drivers are properly equipped to perform safely on the roadways? Common sense would suggest so. Trouble is, the evidence is not very clear that training, in fact, results in lower crash rates, especially in a cost-effective way, which is required to be the basis of most federal rule-makings.
Because of the diversity of views and the divergent interests of all the stakeholders affected by the commercial truck and bus industries, including carriers, safety groups, insurers, police, etc., the USDOT has announced that it intends to undertake a negotiated rule-making or “RegNeg.”
Simply put, this is an approved rule-making mechanism that allows key (and usually strong-willed) stakeholders to sit down together and propose to the government their best collaborative recommendations for what should constitute the content of a future rule. Using an outside facilitator, the group is expected to review available research, debate pros and cons, consider costs, and propose the key components of a rule that eventually, once written by federal rule writers, will follow the public review and comment requirements dictated by law.
Ironically, this is government’s turn to challenge the public to come up with an acceptable rule in light of the many critical complaints these groups have raised so vociferously on all the prior government-proposed rule attempts on this topic. In general, if a proposed rule is capable of being produced from this collaborative process, the result is usually a compromise rule capable of satisfying as many RegNeg members as it can. Sometimes, the process breaks down when participants become intractably wedded to their views. The rule development then reverts back to the government that was unable in the first place to draft an acceptable one.
As for the problem with correlating safety improvements to any specific training, it is true that training does inform knowledge and allows trainees to understand the why and wherefores of safe operations and the handling of large vehicles. Problem is, trainees do not necessarily carry training over to actual practice. This is where driver attitudes and meaningful company oversight enter into the picture.
The value of experience
Research confirms that there remains no real substitute for augmenting formal training with good ol’ experience and time spent behind the wheel and on the road — valuable time spent learning how to safely back up without hitting anything, how to safely operate vehicles during inclement weather, how to follow at a safe distance to ensure stopping time is calculated properly, etc.
I recall taking motorcycle safety training several years ago. While I learned to brake, stop, lean, etc., in order to pass the state licensing test, to think I could safely take to major roads just on the basis of 10 hours of classroom and 20 hours of actual riding in a parking lot seemed reckless and certain to be a mistake. Like any novice driver or rider, until I was able to regularly apply the skill I was taught in the classroom to real world situations and realize firsthand the kinds of situations I would be confronting, did I feel somewhat competent. I had been tested on the road and I handled the situation satisfactorily.
The difficulty for most safety professionals is accepting the idea that a novice driver might be more prepared to operate safely through more practice rather than more formal training. This Committee will need to determine the right mix of training, the specific types of training, the number of hours necessary to achieve competency – questions the federal government has wrestled with for decades.
While drivers’ education programs are urged as the best means to prepare novice drivers to be safe behind the wheel, research reveals that while these programs certainly help the novice driver pass the required knowledge and skills test mandated by each state, the instruction is generally limited in its ability to teach the proper response to the serious challenges faced by the modern driver — speeding by other motorists on congested highways, icy roads, pedestrians distracted by cell phones, close calls occasioned by driving too closely, etc. Facing these hazards and dealing with them competently and with repetition is the most effective predictor of safe performance.
Government, then, has been unable to propose the right recipe for training that will equal the skill demonstrated by the experienced driver who has learned (perhaps the hard way) how to drive defensively and anticipate risk and drive accordingly. Surely, public safety dictates that truck and bus drivers need some form of training before operating heavy vehicles. The RegNeg committee will have its work cut out for it to decide exactly what that training should be.