Advanced Driving courses are designed to help with road safety and improve driver’s skills in key driving areas. Advanced driving is not only for those people embarking on a driving career. It is about giving people more detailed information about car usage and passing on driving tips from people who are highly experienced drivers.

Vehicle safety is our focus when teaching advanced driving as is the control and positioning of the vehicle in a smooth and consistent manner. An attitude of courtesy should also be adopted and high standards of driving competence primarily based on good observation skills, anticipation and the ability to plan your journey.

Assessing occupational road risk and protecting your company is part of our business here at Bill Plant Fleetcraft. We take pride in our high level of services which we offer to you as the customer and believe in delivering measurable results.

There seems to be nothing that divides opinion quite so much as the rights, or wrongs of drivers who hog the centre lane of motorways. The Highway Code advises that we should always move over to the inside lane when we have completed an overtaking manoeuvre, but how often do you see this happen?

The police are of the opinion that drivers who hog the centre lane are a cause of accidents because they invoke jams behind “their rolling road block” creating frustration to the drivers following, indeed the police have invented a phrase for them, Centre Lane Owners Group. On the other hand there are those that will say that it is more dangerous to constantly weave in and out between the inside and centre lane and sometimes get jammed in between two HGV’s when the centre lane is nose to tail with vehicles. Common sense should always prevail when driving a motor vehicle and that is equally important when using our motorways.

The Leicestershire police say there has still been a large number of drink drivers caught over the Christmas break despite all of the warnings. Over 10 percent of drivers stopped in  the  Leicestershire area were over the legal alcohol limit for driving for the month of December 2007.

Fifty nine out of one hundred and fifty nine people caught were aged under twenty five. At the Bill Plant Driving School we take such information very seriously and actively promote road safety.

One of the most aggravating things described by most drivers is what is known as “tail gating”, in other words sitting on the tailgate of the car that is in front, remember those stickers that said “if you can read this you are too close!” Being shunted from behind, or worse being responsible for hitting the car in front can be the cause of you and your passengers serious injury, remember you will be considered to be at fault if you hit the car in front of you!

Stress levels will be reduced by keeping a safe distance between you and the car in front when driving and the driving instructor at the driving school will tell you to use “the two second rule”, Leave at least a two second gap between you and the vehicle in front. And this rule should be increased to double this distance on wet roads and even further on icy roads.