The growing number of road accidents is directly related to badly trained professional drivers or reckless driving by people with little knowledge about vehicles. Not many people know that one of the best ‘green’ training facilities in the country for drivers is located very close to the city and its infrastructure is being wasted with the Government not taking genuine interest in producing quality drivers.
Situated in an area measuring 20 acres, the Krishna District Lorry Owners Association set up this drivers’ training school providing all possible ground conditions like a six-lane highway, single narrow road, a Y-Junction or a Ghat Road Section, a natural causeway with Krishna water flowing across the road.
A visit to the driving school refreshes people, but a 21-day training programme for the Light Motor Vehicle users and 30-day programme for the Heavy Vehicle drivers makes them perfect masters of the machines.
A perfect ‘8’, which every aspiring driver needs to negotiate is practised by a batch of eight bus driver trainees everyday, while another eight receive theoretical training classes on the premises that has a model display room and a cut-model of a lorry.
Meditation class
Training begins with a ‘Meditation class’ on the serene campus situated alongside a large pond and then eight driving instructors and similar number of theoretical instructors under the supervision of Driving School Principal K.S. Raja Rao meticulously take them through all modules, which include understanding the machine and then the right way to handle it.
“Handling the vehicle or driving it is not enough, safety comes first and at every step, we give stress on this aspect so that we can save at least one life on the roads through some qualitative driving skills,” KDLOA president Koneru Venkata Ramesh told The Hindu .
Hostel facility
Going round the campus, he takes pride in showing-off a 250-bed hostel for large groups to attend refresher courses.
This was also the only driving school in Andhra Pradesh with proper training programme for hazardous and dangerous goods vehicles drivers.
Every year the drivers need to attend the course for a day and get fitness certificates from the school to get their special licenses renewed. There are 15 different varieties of dangerous materials like Gas, petroleum, chemicals and other inflammable material that are transported on roads.
The drivers receive all inputs on the working of engines for these lorry-trailers and about the goods themselves or how to handle them/situation in case of an accident.
Health tips are given with key focus on HIV and blood donation.
