With alarm bells now pealing deafeningly in response to a continuous wave of road accidents and attendant multiple casualties, a local training company has signalled its intention to intervene shortly with a view to working with road users in an effort to roll back the carnage.
Adrian Clarke, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Clarke’s Productions, a local training consultancy organisation headquartered at the Critchlow Labour College on Woolford Avenue, earlier this week told the Stabroek Business that the company was moving immediately to collaborate with the United States-based National Safety Council, (NSC), a US-based non-profit organisation and one of that country’s leading safety advocates working to eliminate preventable deaths at work, in homes and communities, and on the road, to roll out a Defensive Driving Course locally.
Clarke told Stabroek Business that the NSC had assigned the Trinidad and Tobago entity JARIC Environmental Safety & Health Services Ltd to work with Clarke Productions to roll out the programme here. JARIC Defensive Driving expert Eric Kipps is expected to arrive here from Trinidad and Tobago ahead of the first of what Clarke says is expected to be several training exercises, the first of which begins on Thursday October 31 and concludes on Friday November 1.
Defensive Driving, Clarke told Stabroek Business, is a comprehensive driver improvement training programme that offers practical knowledge and techniques that help drivers to “choose safe, responsible and lawful driving behaviours,” that help to minimise accidents. “The feedback we have received based on our research points to the fact that the programme has proven to produce fewer vehicle accidents and all of the consequences that derive therefrom,” Clarke told Stabroek Business.
Clarke told this newspaper that while the launch of the Defensive Driving Programme coincides with “a burst of serious, multiple fatality road accidents in Guyana,” it was his hope that those tragic events had raised awareness of the importance of embracing “the responsible approach to driving” that underpins the Defensive Driving training programme. Asserting that training in Defensive Driving had to be attended by “an accompanying responsible approach to road use,” Clarke said that his company was targeting several categories of drivers including public and private sector vehicle drivers, vehicle-owner drivers and drivers of heavy-duty vehicles “that can be particularly dangerous if they are not responsibly driven.”
Asked about targeting minibus drivers for Defensive Driving training, Clarke said that his company has already been in contact with the local Minibus Union regarding the participation of minibus drivers in the training programme. “Without wishing to stigmatise minibus drivers I have to say that we consider it important that they be part of what we are offering. The reality is that a great deal of what we are offering is about discipline, restraint and making safe choices and the impression one gets is that this has been an issue with some minibus
drivers,” Clarke told Stabroek Business.
New drivers are another important category of prospective candidates for the company’s Defensive Driving Course, according to Clarke. “While passing the driving test qualifies you to drive one vehicle or another, there is a confidence-building dimension to driving that has to do with becoming accustomed to what people customarily call the road culture. The reality is that what our programme offers may not necessarily have been taught by the driving instructor. This is not a criticism of our driving instructors, it is simply another way of saying that road use is not only about the ability to drive a vehicle, it is also about being able to make accident-avoiding and life-saving decisions,” Clarke says.
The course runs for an entire working day and a further two hours.
The fee for the Defensive Driving Programme which will be delivered in the company’s Training Room at the Critchlow Labour College is $50,000 though persons who register and pay on or before Monday October 21 will benefit from a $15,000 rebate.
Upon successful completion of the course, participants will receive a certificate and a card from the National Safety Council.
