Coaching is revolutionising how police officers learn to drive and it could see a dramatic reduction in the number of police-related incidents.
The UK’s police force is introducing coaching into driver development programmes in a bid to slash the number of incidents in “blue light situations”, following the success of a Metropolitan (Met) Police pilot in 2009.
Coaching helps police drivers be more reflective in the learning process and take more responsibility for their learning, suggests a study, “The role of coaching in police driver training – an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) study of coaching in a blue light environment”, by psychologists Jonathan Passmore and Claire Townsend. The paper is set to be published this autumn.
Dr Passmore, director of the University of East London (UEL) Coaching Psychology Unit, developed the five-day Coaching for Driver Development programme. “Instructors and pupils said they found the learning process more enjoyable because it responded to where they were.”
The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) agreed on 26 January to roll out the programme nationally, skilling up 36 instructors in England, Wales and Scotland.
Governing standards body the Driver Standards Agency (DSA) is considering how coaching can help civilian novice drivers too – it can be useful when combined with instruction, according to a separate paper by Passmore and Lance Mortimer. “The experience of using coaching as a learning technique in learner driver development: an IPA study of adult learning”, is due to be published in the International Coaching Psychology Review in June.
Police driving has increasingly come under the spotlight. In 2007/08, there were 24 deaths in police-related road traffic incidents and 17 pursuit-related road traffic incidents, according to figures from the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
UEL will carry out more extensive evaluation to see if the new approach addresses safety issues as hoped.
Damien Finbow, sergeant, staff development, at the Met, was one of 10 instructors on the programme. He said: “We’re focusing less on skills and more on motivation and feelings, and their views on their performance when they leave here…Poor attitudes towards risk will likely have disastrous consequences and that’s where the seeds for collision are sown…I strongly believe the coaching approach is very efficient.”
Passmore was introduced to the Met by Sir John Whitmore, executive chairman of Performance Consultants International and a former racing car champion. Sir John is a long-standing champion of coaching for drivers.
On 25 July, UEL will host its second conference on coaching for driver development, with speakers including DSA director Trevor Wedge.
Coaching at Work, Volume 6, Issue 2