I’m enquiring on behalf of my brother who has a medical condition in which he can’t use digital screens as it causes a condition called hemiplegic migraines.
He passed his HGV class 1 and class 2 over 3 years ago and never driven since.
He is looking to get into HGV driving but because of his condition he isn’t going to be able to use a sat-nav or other screen based technology.
Will he be able to do the job without relying on this technology? He’s good with maps and currently does well navigating as a taxi driver without using sat-navs.
He’ll probably be ok. The world worked fine for truckers from the invention of goods vehicles for about a century before Sat Nav existed with drivers using A to Z’s, ordnance survey maps and truckers atlas’s which have the bridge heights and other details in them.
Might take a little longer to plan a route that way, but I still use a truckers Atlas alongside my sat nav to check a route as I still don’t trust electronic gadgets to give the right answer when route planning.
He’ll need to be careful which vehicles he drives with his condition. Sat navs will be the least of his worries when driving mirrorless trucks for example, and that’s not even mentioning some of the newer dashboards.
Seriously mate, ffs
How do you think we all managed before sat navs ? (which are a relatively new concept btw)
True there are many plant pots out there who would go on the sick if their sat nav packed in, but I m sure he has a brain , so tell him to use a truckers bridge map,.and a bit of initiative.
Getting the vibes here you are on a wind up,.I really hope that things have not got that bad for somebody to have to ask that question but sadly I ain’t certain.
Some will require the use of microlise for doing vehicle checks, messaging transport etc…
Anyway I’m sure there are plenty of driving jobs out there that don’t require any use of screens.
I’d maybe be looking for smaller companies. Or ones that are to tight fisted to invest in tech…
For instance Royal mail trunking is very low tech, they do have microlise but nobody uses it. Or at least they didn’t when i was there.
2000AD:
He’ll probably be ok. The world worked fine for truckers from the invention of goods vehicles for about a century before Sat Nav existed with drivers using A to Z’s, ordnance survey maps and truckers atlas’s which have the bridge heights and other details in them.
Might take a little longer to plan a route that way, but I still use a truckers Atlas alongside my sat nav to check a route as I still don’t trust electronic gadgets to give the right answer when route planning.
Some will require the use of microlise for doing vehicle checks, messaging transport etc…
Anyway I’m sure there are plenty of driving jobs out there that don’t require any use of screens.
I’d maybe be looking for smaller companies. Or ones that are to tight fisted to invest in tech…
For instance Royal mail trunking is very low tech, they do have microlise but nobody uses it. Or at least they didn’t when i was there.
Micrilise is hardly a full on screen though and you use it minimally
I think its a question of extent - as in to what extent of screen time does his issue require to cause him issues?
For instance a satnav… you don’t spend hours looking at it (well some do but that’s another thread ) and tend to only ‘keep an eye’ now and again.
If that’s an issue then you need to consider that most trucks these days have instrument displays on a screen and increasingly prevalent mirror less trucks also have screens.
He should be OK provided he’s not doing a ridiculous amount of drops. I don’t trust the things anyway. Only have it on in case Auld Bill decide to close the road I want and send me down some place where lorries shouldn’t be. If you know where you’re going they’re more to get you out the ■■■■ than anything else. And they sometimes put you wrong. So he’s going to have to go old school and carry around a big bag of map books. Everyone should have a proper big map with bridge heights etc, and he’ll find himself accumulating city A-Zs after a while. Get him some big paper clips so it’s easy to flip from one page to another.
I don’t use a sat nav,as I know where all our drops are.
If I do get a new one…a quick look on Google maps,is enough.
Probably been somewhere near it,anyway.
Employer may be able to print you a few localised maps off.
robroy:
Seriously mate, ffs
How do you think we all managed before sat navs ? (which are a relatively new concept btw)
If you were being honest even you’d admit it was harder than it is today. Seeing as you clearly have an issue with long term memory I’m guessing you’ve forgotten about the joys of trying to drive through busy city centres with an A to Z in one hand trying to follow a route over multiple pages, often finding that changes brought out since the A to Z was printed meant the route you chosen was the wrong one, looking in the street index in the back and finding several roads with the same name and taking a pot luck guess at which one it was or trying to work out just where on the four mile long Geldered Road in Leeds a business was. And the joys of asking a local for directions only to find that what they gave you was fine for cars or walking but not lorries. Also the joys of driving down the road and coming across a closure because of an accident that had occurred earlier in the day where if you’d known about it ahead of time you could’ve gone a different way, for example going from Hull to Hemel Hempstead, the M1 being closed at Leicester so you could’ve take the A1 instead.
Sod that. I’ll take 2022 and Google Maps where I can type in the name of a business and the town and it’ll give me a route with voice prompts so I don’t even need to look at the screen and it’ll take into account problems en-route and suggest re-routes if necessary.\
You continue working harder fella, i’m sure someone will give you a nice shiny medal for it…oh wait they won’t. I’ll continue to work smart, having an easier less stressful time doing the job and making those who don’t use all the tools made available by progress look bad.
Some will require the use of microlise for doing vehicle checks, messaging transport etc…
Anyway I’m sure there are plenty of driving jobs out there that don’t require any use of screens.
I’d maybe be looking for smaller companies. Or ones that are to tight fisted to invest in tech…
For instance Royal mail trunking is very low tech, they do have microlise but nobody uses it. Or at least they didn’t when i was there.
Micrilise is hardly a full on screen though and you use it minimally
My company still uses paper maps
Not sure if it would fall under an equal opportunities as I think there is a list of conditions that it applies to, but Depending on what the screen is required for (e.g. Vehicles checks, which could be carried out on paper), it would be hoped that companies that see a driver with good skills and attitude would consider any reasonable adjustments they could made to accommodate someone with this condition.
SteveO76:
Will he be able to do the job without relying on this technology? He’s good with maps and currently does well navigating as a taxi driver without using sat-navs.
Thanks for any input.
He will but it’ll be a lot harder than not, especially with traffic levels we have today. Being a taxi driver navigating around a small area is a lot different to booling around the country in a vehicle 8ft wide, 53ft long, up to 16ft high and weighing up to 44 tonnes being expected to find an address 200 miles away and unfortunately whilst he may be good with maps, as someone who was driving lorries long before Satnav and used to have a big bread basket full of them, there’s not full coverage of the UK with lots of towns and villages not having any paper maps covering them. And whilst back then you could usually pop into a petrol station or local shop and get directions from someone who has lived there for years nowadays you’re likely to find those same places staffed by Eastern Europeans who’ve not been here long or people who can’t even tell you the directions of how they get from home to work.
There are jobs where there’s minimal to no need to use Satnav. I do night trunking at Howdens Joinery for example. We have about 20 places we go to on nights so you learn them over time and the office will print out maps, although they’re limited in area so you’ll not be navigating through Leeds with one, rather the last mile/half mile. “Own contract” work where a company that has nothing to do with making money from transport but runs it’s own lorries would be an idea as you tend to find the drops are to the same customers. Pallet network night trunking. And given he’s been a taxi driver then there’s always the option of things like local multidrop pallet network delivery, builders merchants, food wholesalers that cover the same area he’s been driving in with the taxis.
If he’s able to use a smartphone and look at a screen long enough to put in the address then he can always have the screen turned off/phone placed face down and use the voice guidance on Satnav which will tell him what lanes to be in, what exits to take, when to turn with some of them even speaking the road number or street name it’s wanting you to turn into, for example “At the roundabout take the second left onto the A628” or “in 200 yards turn left onto St Johns Road.”
As above, nothing to stop him using a sat nav if he wants to, he can just put it so the screen is out of sight and listen to the directions, after of course planning his route beforehand, you should only really use a sat nav as an aid and not be something that you rely on.
I had a similar problem, in that I have a hand impairment and couldn’t use early touchscreen technology, so I just carried on doing what I’d always done… instagram.com/p/CZ4tmbtsRHo/
Ps. Forum software crashes when I try and upload it directly. Bet that wouldn’t have happened in mine and Rikki’s day…
I must admit after returning to driving approx 2 years ago
( was off the road for approx 15 years as an operations manager )
So I was still in the loop so to speak , I do find the sat nav an important and helpful tool
But it must be used in conjunction with maps / google maps on phone and your own knowledge.
To rely on sat nav alone wouldn’t be clever at all in my opinion.
One of the reasons I had enough of being in operations was partly due to drivers relying totally on sat nav and getting themselves into problems on the road which in turn gave you problems in the office.
Other reasons the usual driver hassles.
) and tend to only ‘keep an eye’ now and again.