Survey reveals licence check failings
24 November 2014
A recent telephone survey conducted by Driver Hire has revealed that 75% of transport bosses don’t have a formal process in place for checking their employees’ driving licences. Amongst those that do, there is still an over reliance on a visual check of the paper licence. The survey, which reflected the comments of nearly 300 transport managers and operators, also revealed that:
- 45% checked their employees’ licences every six months; 29% annually and a disturbing 4% didn’t both bother!
- When asked if they were aware that the licence’s paper counterpart will be withdrawn next year, survey respondents were fairly equally split (52% ‘no’; 48% ‘yes’),
- When asked for the most important reason for carrying out licence checks, 52% said it was to ensure that they and their drivers were compliant with current legislation.
“As well as being time consuming, visual checking is wide open to failures through both fraud and human error,” says Janet Lambert, Driver Hire’s eServices sales manager. “One customer told me that when they moved to an online system they discovered that one of their drivers had a number of restrictions on their licence which they were not previously aware of. This meant he should have been driving a specially adapted vehicle. Had he been pulled over, the driver would have been told he was driving illegally, with serious consequences for the driver and their employer.
“There are also more and more customers realising that their manual system isn’t foolproof,” she continues. “That’s why dh Licence Check, our online licence checking system, is proving so popular. When we demonstrate it, customers comment on its ease of use. Through a system of ‘traffic light’ alerts, it instantly highlights issues that can be missed on a manual check.”
