Having sat through my 10th tortuous day – yes, 70 whole hours of this farce since the Driver CPC scheme started, I feel compelled to share my thoughts.
While I appreciate the ‘need’ to bring professional drivers to a standard of competence, to simply force upon them hours and hours of often the most repetitive and patronising ‘training’ is the world gone mad.
Last week I was ‘trained’ on how to present myself to passengers. Not greetings, but how to comb my hair, brush my teeth and blow my nose.
If we must continue this then let's develop and define courses that are actually useful and beneficial.
Let's remove, for example, the ridiculous loophole of sitting the same course multiple times to lodge enough hours and bring in real and useful training that genuinely brings those who are governed by it to an enviable professional level.
For example, driving in severe weather conditions, what to do in the event of a fire, or passenger management.
These are the proper skills a driver should learn that takes them a step above their non-professionals peers.
I would far sooner invest in my staff to deliver those skills than continue with this ludicrous situation.
Peter Rosenfeld, MD,
BusyBus, Ellesmere Port