Safety at the forefront of this year’s Tow Show.

This year was the busiest show yet for the Institute of Vehicle Recovery (IVR), the larger stand and return to its original position noticeably increased footfall. The steady flow of visitors provided the highest number of new membership applications since the show’s launch and not surprisingly an increase in the enquiries about training.

The focus of the show this year was safety - What can we do? What can others do? How can we change/improve things? At the business seminar on the Tuesday afternoon the presentations were about improving safety at the roadside and preventing the level of fatalities and injuries the industry has seen over the last 12 months.

There was a great deal of discussion about raising the awareness of recovery technicians, the public, work providers, basically everyone and it was agreed there is an ongoing need for training. Basically sending a recovery technician out on a job without the training to protect him/herself and the technical knowledge to cope with whatever the recovery may raise is unacceptable and reckless.

This isn’t the IVR touting for business, as some may think and will probably say, it is an Institute that is concerned that people lose their lives or are injured, some being so traumatised they cannot continue to work in an industry they love, because they lack even the basic knowledge they both need and deserve to do this job.

In less than 12 months many will need to have completed 35 hours for their Driver CPC, don’t view this as how can we get the 35 hours in the quickest, most undemanding, way possible - basically a box ticking exercise – use that training in the way it was intended to gain knowledge and experience which may one day save your life.

Trainers are already being booked months in advance, don’t leave it until the last minute – planning now will cause less disruption to the day to day management of a business and also spread the cost.

The IVR would like to thank Paul Gregory and his team for an amazing show, under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. Dave would have been so proud and yes ‘the show must go on.’

Never has the IVR’s strapline ‘Training today to secure your tomorrow’ been more relevant.