So much of the problems in our industry result, IMHO, from the training that new drivers receive before passing their test and being allowed out.
So much has gone wrong with our training industry, and in some ways they themselves have aided and abetted the poorer standards required and unfortunately passing, now this is not knocking the newer or younger drivers far from it, there were just as many knuckle heads back in the day but the dirt hard work and strength required to do the job in the past, together with the really quite difficult to master vehicles tended to sort the wheat from the chaff in short order.
Also there were other industrial jobs people could get which paid as well or better, not just working in warehouses piled sky high with chinese crap, so lorries weren’t the automatic alternative second/fourth career choices as they are now, generally lorry drivers were raised from short trousers to want to be lorry drivers, i know i was one of them, not as anyone encouraged me it was what i wanted to do.
Anyway, back to training new drivers.
Automatics have no place in the world of training, if someone can’t pass a lorry (with power steering) test unless they have an automatic they have no place on the road, the gearbox together with the steering is the prime method of controlling the vehicle on the road.
At the same time this bloody brakes to slow gears to go mantra should be made a hate crime, this is not how you control a lorry, lorry control is determined by the correct gear and throttle balance, utilising PRIMARILY any auxillary retarding systems the vehicle has fitted, ie exhaust brake.
You cannot teach someone to be a lorry driver in 3 or 5 days, it simply cannot be done, you are teaching them monkey fashion to pass a test.
The cost has to go up because the training has to be longer, probably twice as long, to include such things as bridge awareness tuition, and a decent day’s course on maneuvering and getting the hang of picking up and dropping fully loaded trailers.
There are many things that need tweaking IMO, but mainly if the trainer (fair play, another instructor must also try their best) comes to the conclusion that a trainee is not and never will be a lorry driver as long as they have a hole in their arse, then the training should stop immediately and the trainee sent for appraisal at an agreed independent trainer’s tribunal (to be fair to all this should be by shared cost by all similar to the MIB insurance system).
It is in no-ones best interest to train people to drive lorries like large cars and to pass steering wheel attendies by the score (oh look at my first time pass rate, train with me young man 
) when lets be honest a bloody chimp could jump into a modern lorry and take it up the motorway, and yes there are too many chimps getting through because they keep smashing into bridges, ramming each other up the arse, and turning the whole shebang arse over head on a perfectly straight road.
The job and the lorries nowadays no longer sort the wheat, but the need for the chaff to be removed from the game is as urgent as it ever was, so some buggers had better get their heads together and come up with a modern method of threshing.
I had hoped the sad case of the runaway tipper in Bath might have highlighted this issue, with pertinent questions asked at the highest level and some action plan initiated, sadly it appears not to have made a scrap of difference…but not to worry eh, gongs and gold plated pensions guaranteed for the apparatchiks in charge.