According to Graham Hurdle, managing director of the firm, a true assessment will focus on drivers’ knowledge, attitude, concentration and observation, and their hazard perception skills.

‘I speak to a lot of companies who tell me that certain high-mileage drivers are automatically classed as high risk – almost removing the need to conduct any further assessment of their abilities,' he said.

‘Yet the reality is that a high-mileage driver can often be a lot safer than a low-mileage driver, and to categorise risk in such a basic way means either you allocate far too many people into a high-risk category, and this can become expensive if they are all expected to carry out on-road driver training. Or, the wrong drivers are classed as high risk which means your training budget is wasted all together.’

E-Training World bases its risk ratings purely on the outcome of the driver’s online assessment, with average results showing 9% of company car, van and HGV drivers are high risk, 68% are medium risk and 23% low risk.

‘We sometimes find companies with 30% or more high risk drivers who are spending way over the odds for training,’ added Hurdle, ‘and they are often bemused to how so many drivers could be deemed so dangerous that they fall into a high-risk category.’