When road safety could mean life or death...

Corporate executives, diplomats, VIPs and their families regularly take up ‘exciting’ new postings abroad, frequently in environments far more hostile than the UK. From Afghanistan to the Middle East, Nicaragua to Pakistan and Columbia to South Africa the risk of being a victim of car-jacking, kidnap, assassination or a shooting is high.

Additionally, with the threat from terrorism and organised crime at a global high, more people than ever before are either directly or indirectly exposed to a wider range of risks.

While such dangers can manifest themselves in the UK, witness the July 2005 terrorist bombings, the risks of being a victim while driving are much greater for the thousands of British business executives, government officials, security professionals, chauffeurs and other employees travelling and working in parts of the world less stable than home.

That’s the view of ArmorGroup International, one of the world’s leading security training companies, which over more than 25 years has established itself as a leading provider of defensive, protective security services to national governments, multinational corporations and international peace and security agencies operating in hazardous environments. This year, ArmourGroup became part of G4S, the world’s leading international security solutions group. Included in the company’s raft of services is driver training and the company typically uses ex-special forces instructors as trainers. While the company’s specialist hostile environment driving courses are targeted at ‘high risk’ individuals, more recently it has provided training to commercial drivers as well as younger drivers in the UK, who may not be victims of a suicide bomber but, nevertheless, are ‘high risk’, according to crash statistics.

Director of training at ArmorGroup International Alex Reid said: “Organisations which send employees into a potentially hostile environment have a duty of care to ensure that they are provided with adequate training and the necessary insurance should the worst happen.

“Failure to offer adequate preparatory training or suitable insurance cover can be regarded as a failure in an organisation’s duty of care and can leave them open to potentially damaging law suits. However, in many instances organisations are failing to provide even the most basic pre-deployment training – a core element of which should be driver training.”

The company, which is headquartered in London and has a training establishment at Pershore, Worcestershire, offers a range of driving courses embracing defensive and evasive driving, close protection tactical driving and instinctive driving. It also has long-term operations in 38 countries and over the past couple of years has supported organisations in over 160 countries.

Chief vehicle instructor Lee Bate said: “Courses have been devised to train and prepare employees who are deployed to hostile or hazardous environments. We teach people to recognise and avoid potential threats and equip them with the skills to respond to any type of incident.”

Analysis

For example, the company’s Hostile Environment Awareness Training Course stresses the importance of travel pattern analysis – don’t follow the same route every day – surveillance detection in case of being followed, attack recognition and incident reaction training perhaps in the event of mortar attack or an ambush.

Meanwhile, a Hazard Awareness and Crash Avoidance Course, which is perhaps the one most closely associated to the on-road driver training programmes offered in the UK by a range of organisations, combines anticipation with a superior understanding of vehicle dynamics to reduce the risk to drivers and other road users.

The company’s Advanced Tactical Driving Course is aimed at close protection staff who want to improve their tactical driving competency and embraces convoy manoeuvres, progressive driving at high speed and evasive driving, which includes showing ‘students’ how they can best escape from an incident using their vehicle and includes hard reverse turns, surgical removal of other vehicles and forced ramming.

Mr Reid said: “In our experience, vehicles play a major part in a significant proportion of hostile or dangerous incidents concerning UK workers both at home and overseas.

“In many cases employees are hurt or killed in road traffic accidents caused either by other road users, poor road conditions or just plain careless driving. As a result, hostile environment driver training courses normally include a mixture of advanced driving skills combined with hazard awareness and crash avoidance techniques.”

Highlighting the increase of car-jackings around the world, but particularly in South Africa and South America, he said: “In all these instances, it has been proven that the chance of those travelling in the vehicle surviving rises dramatically if the driver has undergone specialist training.

“Sadly, there are numerous examples of cases when executives, VIPs or their drivers have not been adequately trained and have paid the ultimate price. Conversely, a number of high profile individuals have benefited from good training.”

Annually, around 7,000 people undertake ArmorGroup training courses to improve their driving skills, according to Mr Bate, who spent 14 years in the military serving across the world.

Now part of a ‘global mobile driving team’, he said: “We believe our training is quite unique. Other companies offer courses focused on improving anticipation and awareness, but that is in environments known to drivers – in town centres and on motorways.

“Driving conditions and the risks faced are vastly different in Iraq, Afghanistan and Nigeria, for example. Employees are facing a totally different driving culture and totally different road conditions. Clients leave our courses with their driving skills significantly improved and a very high degree of confidence.”

Highlights

The company highlights the case of President Musharaff of Pakistan, who has evaded several attempts on his life – two of which were thwarted by the quick thinking of his driver who drove through ambushes in spite of significant damage to the vehicle.

While, the drivers of presidents are not on courses every day, Mr Reid says: “A core element to hostile environment driver training is to make the response to potentially hazardous situations instinctive. We believe that the only way to do this is have extensive practical experience of ‘live’ situations.

“Advanced tactical driver training courses can offer essential driving skills to executives, their families and their close protection officers.”

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