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TTC Group, a road safety training provider for both motor vehicle operators and cyclists, is now running HGV driver training modules that include time spent on a bicycle.
Ryan Crawley, of TTC Group’s Road Safety Services said: "We know that truck drivers are concerned about the vulnerability of cyclists. This role reversal will allow them to experience a cyclist’s point-of-view and develop even more understanding and empathy for vulnerable road users."
He added: "Drivers will see how the other side sees it."
The one day Driver Certificate of Professional Competence course run by the TTC Group working with its Cycle Experience division, includes both theory and on road cycle training in bust urban environments. The seven hour course counts towards the 35 hours of Driver CPC training needed by professional drivers who carry passengers and large good vehicle drivers before September 2014.
Cycle Experience trainer Jon Pook, who cycles in London, said he often sees cyclists riding down the narrow left hand channel beside trucks.
"There is no escape route for them. They are squeezed one behind the other into a very narrow gap with a large truck or bus immediately next to them. It is a very dangerous place to be and very hard for lorry drivers to see them."
While many cyclists are now far more aware of the danger of going up the side of trucks at traffic lights and junctions, the design of filter lanes into ‘Advanced Stop Line’ boxes seems to suggest that this is a safe manoeuvre. And when truck drivers over-take cyclists they place cyclists in the danger position by default, and often cannot see them from mirrors. A trucker who wrote "suicide and safe side" on his truck presumably never ever overtakes cyclists, putting them in the "suicide" position.
