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Welcome to Driven By Excellence, your trusted place for all things logistics and road safety from PDT Fleet Training. Each month, join host Hattie Hlad as she interviews experts on a wide range of topics within the logistics field.
Hattie Hlad 0:03
Driven By Excellence, your trusted place for all things logistics and road safety. Today we are honoured to be joined by former inspector Olly Tayler QPM. Olly has served 30 years in policing and came to the attention of our director of PDT back in 2015 when she noticed that Olly was creating unique ways to tackle young driver road risk. Olly has served across numerous areas of policing, including response, neighbourhood, special ops and crime reduction. But the part we're going to attempt to unpack today is his experience in roads policing, and dig down to find out what led him to get so proactively involved to reduce road risk. Olly, thank you so much for joining us. When we first started prepping for this episode. Firstly, we were really excited that you agreed to join us and then secondly, we all came to the conclusion that half an hour just won't be long enough to cover your amazing story, but let's try and give it a go. Can we start by introducing yourself to our listeners?
Olly Tayler 1:07
Yes. Hi, Hattie. I'm Olly, and I spent 30 years as a police officer down in the West Country. About half of that was spent in roads policing, as well, so very much spent my life out on the roads, dealing with motorists from every area of road communities you can think of.
Hattie Hlad 1:26
So I think let's start by this, our listeners will want to understand what led you to choose a career in policing.
Olly Tayler 1:34
So 30 years ago seems like forever ago, I had an older sister who was a police officer in Dorset, and she used to come home from time to time and tell stories of daring do and bravado and chasing burglars through gardens in the early hours of the morning and being a quite impressionable teenager, in my late teens at that point. I thought that sounds quite exciting. At the time, I was actually in catering as a chef and I was kind of fed up of long hours and unsocial hours, people shouting at me all day long. So I thought I know I'll choose a career where I've got antisocial hours and long shifts, and people want to shout at you most of the time, but it was outdoors rather than indoors majority. So I applied for the police and I didn't really at the time think I was only 20/21 at the time, I didn't really think that I would get very far, Devon and Cornwall had very, very high recruitment standards at the time, they were considered one of the toughest forces in the country to get into and I did my final interview and sort of the three people on the interview panel called me back in after 10 minutes deliberating and said they're going off me a job and that was it and I started 10 days later, and that's 30 years ago.
Hattie Hlad 2:40
Wow. So a long time wondering about what's going to happen next! I'm sure our listeners will be keen to hear about, especially your experience in roads policing, often as fleet operators, driver training organisations or people in general who stepped on the other side of the fence, working to stop incidents from happening and we all have that mentality that it will never happen to us. But the reality is it does happen. Can you break down your experience from when you first attended a road traffic collision.
Olly Tayler 3:12
So yeah, obviously over my career, I've attended literally hundreds of road traffic collisions, RTCs, everything from a bump in a car park up through two collisions involving multiple fatalities, and pretty much everything in between. So one thing that I've learned is that people rarely go out intending to become involved in a collision, they don't go out, it's something that happens very, very quickly. It's the blink of an eye. It's usually as a result of somebody who has made a poor decision behind the wheel, they've chosen to do something. They haven't thought about the consequences or the risks involved in the particular behaviour that they've demonstrated, behind the wheel and suddenly things have gone out of control and the minute they start to go out of control, actually, those people just become a passenger, whether they're a driver or a passenger, they just become a passenger, physics and gravity will take over, particularly in the high-end collisions that I've unfortunately had to investigate many of throughout my time as a traffic officer. One thing that I think people don't really understand is that road safety is actually everybody's responsibility. It's not just the responsibility of the police or the local authority or people like yourselves. Actually, it's every one of the listeners to this has a responsibility around road safety. It doesn't matter whether you're a car driver, a car passenger, whether you don't have a car, whether you're a pedestrian, whether you ride a horse, a bike doesn't matter really doesn't matter. Road safety is a critical part of everybody's... or should be a critical part of every thought processes when they're out using the road. In whatever form they use the roads in and that's the first step is people getting people to understand that they all have a part to play in that road safety journey if you like and if everybody understands their part to play, actually, the roads could become an awful lot safer.
Hattie Hlad 5:17
Yeah. So everyone has a responsibility. Can you talk us through what happens when you arrive at a scene of a collision? Can you talk us a bit through that?
Olly Tayler 5:26
Yes. So are we talk in kind of the higher-end collision type work that I've done or the lower-end stuff whilst it can be traumatic for those involved, sort of the lower-end collisions, the sort of damage only, your maybe knocks in car parks and things like that, tend to be fairly routine and we'll go through and we'll obtain... make sure people have exchanged details if obviously, they've been injured, then we'll record it under the road traffics act that we need to. When we start to get into hiring collisions, things can become a little bit different so often is not we'll start with a call on the radio, to reports of a serious road traffic collision. At that point, often as not, we have very little knowledge of what we're going to be heading into. So one of the roles I undertook on traffic was what was called a lead investigating officer. So in simple terms, my role would be to attend these collisions and then manage the scene. So manage the evidence-gathering phase at the scene, deal with any offenders, deal with witnesses, deal with victims and families, and then go into the Investigation Phase. So in short that we gather all the relevant evidence at the scene, be that physical evidence, witness evidence, digital evidence, doesn't matter what it is, and then use that to try and piece together what happened. So I always looked at all my investigations as a jigsaw puzzle and when I got to the scene, that jigsaw puzzle was in pieces all over the place of little bits, this jigsaw everywhere. So my role was then to gather all the bits of the jigsaw together with colleagues, with specialist colleagues, and slowly put that picture back together. So that come the end of the day, if somebody was responsible for injuring or killing somebody else on the roads, that they saw justice that they saw... they were put through the justice system, they were then put into a court process, be it a magistrate's court or a Crown Court for the real high-end offences. Or if as often as not, in the cases I've dealt with, over the years, the person responsible has been the person who has tragically lost their life, then it'll then go through the coronial process, so it goes to inquest. So then what we need to do is make sure that we prepare a file for the coroner to be able to hold an inquest into the death of an individual. So it's a jigsaw puzzle. So it's about building that jigsaw puzzle and when there's always loved ones left behind after these collisions and really, for me, it was very much about providing the answers to them of what happened and why did it happen, because that's what they want. One they want to know that and secondly, they deserve to know that, their loved ones been killed on the roads, they deserve to know what's happened at the end of the day. So as a lead investigating officer, my responsibility is to rebuild that jigsaw puzzle and often is not, we can pretty much complete a picture. There are occasions when there are maybe two or three pieces missing and those pieces may well be the only person that could ever answer that question would be the driver involved or the person involved is tragically being killed. So whilst we may not have the full jigsaw puzzle back together, what we do have, do we have enough of a picture to be able to answer those two questions What happened and why did it happen, and we've rebuilt that collision. So to do that, we have specialist colleagues in the police service who will come out to a scene and provide expert evidence-gathering capabilities, the forensic collision investigators, extremely highly trained and talented officers who will be responsible for gathering the physical evidence that is seen. So plotting vehicles, plotting debris, looking at skid marks, looking at all those sorts of bits and pieces, to then be able to provide a package of evidence. Then you build on top of that, you put in your witness evidence, you put in digital evidence, CCTV, dash cams, sort of mobile phone type evidence, things like that, then you've got your physical witnesses. So you've got potentially people who've seen what happened, who may have seen the manner of driving before a collision has occurred. So you then start to build those into the inquiry and into that picture as well and slowly but surely, you'll get this picture start to develop of exactly what's happened you can then look at okay, so now we know what's happened. Is somebody responsible? Has anybody... any driver involved in this collision have they committed a road traffic offence and if so, which road for candidates they're committed and do we have the evidence to be able to put them in front of a call for them to answer what they've done? And then we get through that process. So it's not an overnight process by any means. It's a lengthy process, particularly fatal investigations. But it's critical that we provide those answers and we hold those responsible to account.
Hattie Hlad 10:22
Yeah, absolutely. Once you've left a scene and you've witnessed something quite traumatising let's say, how do you decompress after a day like that? What support do you have?
Olly Tayler 10:37
So whilst serving as a police officer, we had access to a lot of support systems through work, which was great. There was access to counselling, there was access to peer support some very, very good support networks. Everybody, I think, has a different way of dealing with trauma within not just the police service. But we've talked about blue light services, there are other organisations and military to a certain extent who are exposed to trauma in various ways. I think, within policing, there are certain areas of policing where you are exposed to a lot more trauma and roads policing is definitely one of those areas. I went into roads policing with my eyes well and truly open that yes, I was going to see some absolute horrors when I was out dealing with these collisions. So I wasn't naive to it by any means.
Hattie Hlad 11:31
Do you feel like you were prepared for something like that?
Olly Tayler 11:34
No, not really, no. I think you have to find a way to be able to deal with it when you do face it, it's very difficult because that's sort of the way the human mind works and you get a call on the radio to a report of two vehicle road traffic collision and it's been reported serious, there were injuries at the scene. You know, there's a casualty bleeding profusely or there's a casualty in cardiac arrest, you start to build a picture of what you're heading into. But it's very careful you don't want to do is you don't want to start to preempt things, you want to be able to get to a scene and go right I need to look at this scene, I need to start right at the beginning, I need to have be very quite impartial in relation to managing that scene and as a lead investigator, it was always you knew that you were the person that officers were looking to, to make the decisions to lead an investigation, to provide that guidance and leadership and I can always remember, as a young in-service police constable when you went to a sort of a bit of a higher end job a bit of more of a serious end job. That you were always very grateful when the sergeant turned up, because the sergeant was a person who's going to make it all better, so they would always make it better when they turned up, it was always 'the Sergeant's here, thank God for that'. Then I became a sergeant and I remember the very first sort of high-end job I attended was actually it was quite a serious stabbing and I turned up at the scene, and there were a number of officers already there and I got out the car thought, it's not a problem, because the sergeant will be here in minutes. Oh, no, I am the sergeant and now I've got this additional layer of responsibility. So as a traffic sergeant, and as a lead investigator, you've got that level of responsibility, a level of expectation, you are there to do a specific job. So whilst it's very difficult at times, becoming emotionally involved in a job, for me personally meant that I became ineffective at what I was doing, I had to maintain that discipline of being very, almost clinical about it in that way...
Hattie Hlad 13:32
Yeah, disconnected.
Olly Tayler 13:33
And disconnected from what I was dealing with. And yes, you're absolutely right, I had to become disconnected and whilst that might seem quite harsh to your listeners, that I'm dealing with people and families at the darkest moments in their lives here who've lost a loved one on the roads. The only way that I'm going to get to provide those answers for them is by having that disconnect. So I know you talked about that decompression and everybody deals with trauma in different ways. Not that it's right but I think when you get exposed to repeated trauma, as I have done over many years, you can become a little bit immune to it, you can sort of look at it and say it's another fatal RTC and you have a way of processing it yourself and everybody processes things differently. I found that actually going out for a walk in the countryside, fairly keen runner so go out and you know, go for a run and clear my head out or just do something completely disconnected to work and I found that actually, that was a very good way for me personally to be able to decompress from that work. However, it's really important to understand when you are exposed to repeated trauma that actually when enough is enough. So when your trauma bucket is full, yes, you know, we have a term that I use that I'm not going to repeat for your listeners but it is bucket but is a bucket full of something else basically and when that bucket overflows, you need to recognise that because actually, you might start with quite a little small bucket, and that will become quite full quite quickly. So you need to decide what to do with that trauma. So you can either process it and deal with it, or you put it into a slightly bigger bucket, but you keep putting into bigger buckets, bigger buckets, bigger buckets, because every time that bucket is gonna overflow, you think, Well, I just chuck it into a slightly bigger bucket till you end up with a trauma skip, and then you've got this skip full of trauma sat behind you thinking what on earth I'm going to do with it. So I recognised a couple of years ago that my time on roads policing was up and that I needed to do something else to finish my career with, finish off my time in the police and give me that time to decompress from the jobs that I had dealt with and, you know, over that time and roads policing, I've attended literally dozens of fatalities, dozens on the road. From fairly straightforward medical episodes where somebody has drifted into a hedge at 10 miles an hour, you know, relatively straightforward, up to multi-vehicle, multi-fatalities on dual carriageways and motorways and everything in between. So it just got to the point where I recognised that my time in roads policing is completed, there was a trigger job that that I dealt with, and it involved a child who had been tragically killed and it was about a week later, and I was sat doing some administration and I kind of just pushed my keyboard away and thought that job didn't bother me in the slightest and that to me was a real warning sign that a job involving a child who tragically lost their life in a collision. It hadn't troubled me...
Hattie Hlad 16:44
I thought something like that may have been the lead to why you thought this was enough. But you saying that, it's even more shocking.
Olly Tayler 16:52
And it was that job. That one job led me to recognise that my time in roads policing was up, that I had to do something for my own sanity and my own well-being and I came away and I finished my career in another part of the organisation doing another role. I don't regret my time in roads policing at all. I don't regret in the slightest and I have a huge amount of satisfaction in the work I did on roads policing and providing those answers to families to be able to have at least some sort of closure particularly around, they understand what happened to understand why it happened and if needs be put those responsible in front of a court let a court decide their fate and there was a particular case that I dealt with that when people used to ask me and I had colleagues that weren't in roads policing used to say to me why, you know, why do you keep going back? What makes you keep going back to these things time and time again. So I told them, I said, because of and it was actually a lovely, lovely old couple, Douglas and Patricia and it was because of them that I used to keep going back and keep going back to doing the job that I did and it was their story that led me to carry on and gave me the real drive to keep going back day after day into that environment into that world of trauma and roads policing and fatal road traffic collisions.
Hattie Hlad 18:08
Can you talk about them for a little bit?
Olly Tayler 18:10
I can. Of course I can. Yes, it's... again, it is a sad story and you know, and just for your listeners to bear in mind that it is quite a sad story as to what happened, although there is a... I wouldn't say it's a happy ending. But for me, it was a very heart-wrenching ending for me. So Douglas and Patricia. So they were an elderly couple in the twilight of their years. She was in her 70s, he was a little bit older in his early 90s and they were enjoying retirement. Patricia was very, very active in the local area and she was chair of the local walking group and used to go out. Douglas wasn't in the best of health, but he was still pretty good. So this one morning, they've gone out, they'd gone out to a local garden centre, they had a spot of lunch, they've gone into local town and they were driving home from that back to the home address. They weren't that far from the home address and the piece of road that the collision occurred on was basically there was a hidden dip. So hidden dip in this piece of road and they were coming from one direction and the offending driver was coming from the other and the offending driver was in a much much bigger car than they were, huge compare the two vehicles were massively different in size and the offending driver decided that he was going to overtake another vehicle into coming into the dip and hadn't seen Douglas and Patricia's car coming out the way and basically met them at fairly high speed in the middle of this dip to the point that it punted Douglas and Patricia's car back up into a hedge. They were both airlifted to two different hospitals and Douglas tragically passed away the following day. He had suffered awful injuries and it was no surprise he ended up passing away. Patricia initially survived although very quickly established she had a significant spinal injury and was going to be paralysed from the chest down for the rest of her life. So a couple of days later, I was actually called out from home to go to the scene to act as the lead investigator to investigate the collision. So I attended the scene, dealt with all that side of it, a couple of days later was up at the hospital where Patricia was a patient in the intensive care unit and Douglas had been taken for a post-mortem examination to establish the cause of death, basically a common practice when we're dealing with fatal road traffic collisions and I got a call from the office to say that Patricia had said she wanted to be with Douglas, she had nothing left to live for and she just wanted to be with Douglas and for this hospital to withdraw her medication, which is a process that they can do and the only chance I had to obtain the evidence or her account was going to be there and then because they said once they withdraw medication, she would pass away within a few hours. So I attended the intensive care unit, sat with Patricia for four or five hours, obtaining a handwritten statement, knowing that when they withdrew her medication, she would only survive for a few hours and I was probably one of the last people to see her alive and that that was really hard to deal with really hard. Although, again, I had a job to do. I had to get her evidence, her evidence was critical in investigation. So you've got her statement out of her, left her to it and I waited for the phone call from hospital to say that she passed away and that phone call never came and against all the odds, Patricia survived, against all the odds, and her body just wouldn't give up and I then saw Patricia again, about 18 months later in Crown Court, when the case of the trial was hurt for the driver involved and I turned up a Crown Court and Patricia's there with a carer in a wheelchair, still no feeling from the chest down, completely paralysed and she just sort of nodded and half smiled at me as we walked in and we went in, the hearing was heard. The driver was convicted, and he was sentenced to, whatever it was eight, eight and a half years in prison. So I was quite happy with that. Okay, we got a result in court. That's what we needed and as I was walking out of the court, Patricia was out in front, of course, with a carer and she called me over and she said all he said, How old are you? I said, I'm okay. You know, how are you getting on? Well, you know, apart from the obvious she was fine. She said to me, Olly she said, Can you remember the last thing he said to me when I was in hospital? I said I remember it very clearly, I remember it word for word. You said Well, today, you kept your promise and as I walked out of the hospital room, 18 months earlier, having taken a statement, I've very rarely made promises in policing very, very rarely, because I can't keep them and it's not fair to make a promise to somebody that there's a possibility you can't keep perhaps. But I felt that because of the circumstances that basically what I'd said was I promised Patricia, that I would see justice done for her and Douglas and that was my promise to Patricia and she remembered that and she, when we come out of court, said, Today Olly, you've kept your promise and that did affect me for quite a while and I thought that was the end of the story. But it wasn't and, it was last year. So last year, I was doing a sponsored walk in South Devon and on part of this walk there was a marshal on a road junction. I was walking towards this Marshal and I was just thinking, I recognise you, I recognise you. So she looked up, and she saw me straight away, she said Olly! She said I haven't seen you for years, and I'm thinking oh it's someone I recognised, but I didn't have a clue what she said. Anyway, she saved me thankfully, do you know I was Pat's friend. I said, of course and then somebody recognised who she was and where our paths have crossed. Anyway, before I had a chance to say how was Patricia? She said, Oh, she passed away a few years ago of old age. I said, Oh, well, that's actually really nice to hear. Not that she passed away. But it was old age that... you know she passed away of old age. She said, yes. She said you know, yes, she lived the rest of her life as she was obviously when you saw her, she said, but she never forgot you. She never forgot you. She often used to refer to Olly, the policeman who kept his promise and when people said to me, why do you do what you do? Why'd you keep going back? And I said, it's easy. It's really easy. I keep going back for Douglas and Patricia, and all the other Douglas's and Patricia's is out there who can't see justice done for themselves and it's people like myself and colleagues who are still serving, who it's their responsibility to ensure that all the Douglass and Patricia's out there, get the justice they deserve when they lose somebody on the roads. So that's why I do what I do.
Thank you so much for sharing that story. That was really powerful. Obviously, we've spoken about the worst scenarios of roads policing. But with your vast experience, what would be the one change you would make to improve safety on our roads?
Education, I think would be the key for me looking at it far more education, looking at far more structured education, looking at making it mandatory within the national curriculum, having road safety elements. I think by the time a young driver gets behind the wheel of a car at 17, or 18, they've actually already had a significant amount of driver training or exposure to driver behaviour through whoever has been taken them and driving around. So parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, older brothers and sisters and they will start to pick up some really bad habits that poor driving instructors out there and I'm sure some of your listeners will be driving instructors and hopefully at this point nodding in agreement that, oh, yes, they've got some really bad habits, they've got to try and kick out to people. So education, and for me, as well retesting, to bring in a process of periodic retesting You can pass your test at 17, and not have to be reassessed and retest until you're in your 70s. That's over 50 years and 50 years is a really long time to be able to establish some really bad habits is driving and some very risky habits in driving. So it's always interested me Hattie and I've never really got get my head around this and maybe one of the listeners will have an answer for us, who knows, on a postcard, is that if you were able to take or somebody to take up the violin, okay, take up the violin at the age of 17. They would practice that violin, pretty much every day, some days, it might be for 10 minutes, some days it might be for an hour, some days, it might be for two or three hours. By the time we got to sort of 35/40/45, you'd think that they were actually going to be a pretty good violin player. Yeah. Why is the same not true for driving? And the more people drive, in some cases, the worse they get, they become complacent. They take risks, they start to take chances behind the wheel, they just take a quick glance at that phone, they just, I'll just have one for the road, you know, just one pint for the road, I'll just go a little bit over the speed limit, whatever it might be, they'll just push my luck once too often. So actually, as we get older, as drivers, in the main become worse at driving, not better and I've never understood why that's the case, the more we drive, the better we should be getting at it. Now I know we talked about commercial drivers, and those that drive for Work tend to be of a higher standard because they've had additional training. Over my career I worked out I'd had about 900 hours of additional driver training throughout my career. Being in traffic, I went on and did a number of specialist driving courses in advanced driving and things like that, but 900 additional hours and I consider myself to be an OK driver, pretty good driver, not the best driver out there. But certainly, I considered myself safe and aware of what's going around me and the risks involved. But that's because I've had that education. So for me, the one thing, if I could change, would be education from an early age and have a whole structured education sort of packages, running all the way through up until beyond test time and into adulthood and beyond. To be able to get people to understand the risks they put themselves at when they're behind the wheel. The human body hasn't evolved at the same pace that technology has evolved. We as human beings are not designed to be travelling along multilane carriageways at 70 miles an hour in a small tin box, we just aren't designed that way and it's going to take millions of years for the body to evolve properly to be as safe as possible. So we have to rely on one or several things. We have to rely on engineering in vehicles, the safety aspects in vehicles to keep us safe. We have to rely on engineering as well. So these, sorry the enforcement side, we've had engineering, so enforcement, so if people do it wrong, there is a price to be paid on that through enforcement and then the big one for me is the education. It's actually to understand the risks that you put yourself out behind the wheel and what happens if you get it wrong. So combine the three, education, enforcement, engineering, for me, the education is the big one.
Hattie Hlad 29:06
The main thing. A lot of our listeners will be commercial drivers or even responsible for fleet management. What is your view on how commercial fleets can positively impact road safety? What would be the key areas advice there for them.
Olly Tayler 29:21
Fleets a really interesting one because they are on the road an awful lot of the time, often as not they are driving branded vehicles. So whilst they are professional drivers, they're actually awesome ambassadors for a company. So if they misbehave behind the wheel, if they engage in risky road behaviours, they're also advertising that for the company they work for, and I've seen that on countless occasions and I look at and thinking, why are you doing that when you've got your company plastered all over your vehicle? You know, it's a very poor advert for the company. Albeit that's one individual within the company, but actually it doesn't take any more than one individual to be able to then ruin the reputation the name of a company in this in that sort of scenario. So for me, I think that the main advice for fleet drivers and commercial drivers is be aware that there's an expectation on you to drive to the very best of your abilities. Everybody's abilities are different, not everybody's going to be the world's best driver. But actually, if you choose to drive for a vocation, choose to drive for a living, you obviously clearly enjoy it, you get enjoyment out of driving, what you have to understand is the responsibility that then sits on you as that commercial, as that fleet driver, that you are there to provide an example to others on the road. Often as not, you're driving a much bigger vehicle as well. So lorries, light-goods vehicles, heavy goods vehicles, talking about an HGV, when you're talking like fully-loaded HGV at 44 tonnes, that is, in essence, a lethal weapon in the wrong hands, a lethal weapon. So it has to be respected. So it's about respecting not only the vehicle you're driving, but the road, other drivers on the road, and that you are part of that road community, you are not the only person on the road, you are one of many people on the road, respect, not only your bit of the road, but also respect those around you as well. So that's for the drivers is having that respect and understanding and don't take those risks, it's just not worth it, don't take the risk. If you don't take the risk, then you're going to be fine. You know, for fleet managers, I think it's a little bit different, I think it's about setting that standard. So as a fleet manager, set that standard, set your expectations out right from the outset. But make sure that you stick to those expectations, if you set the expectations, make sure that you adhere to them as well, and that you set the standard and everyone comes to your standard, you're not gonna drop your standards, because well, they're not that great. No, you come up to my standard at the end of the day, there's the bar, that's what you come up to, but ensuring that again, that you have mechanisms for dealing with sort of I know, there's all sorts of mechanisms around fleet management and these sorts of things. I've seen some very good fleet managers, and I've come across some not-so-great fleet managers. But in the main, I think the majority of them very good and they've got that responsibility, that weight of responsibility on their shoulders as a fleet manager, that they understand that, you know, they need to make sure that their drivers when they go out are the absolute safest, sort of the pinnacle of their driving abilities to be able to go out and one to be able to drive safely and two to represent the company in a positive light, whatever the company may be. So there's a really important part to play for every driver, but for the fleet managers to set those standards, set those examples for all their other drivers to say this is how we are going to be as a company as a driving force as a road user community. This is where the standard sits and you meet that standard. That is not negotiable. Yeah, that, for me is the key.
Hattie Hlad 32:41
Let's move away a minute from commercial drivers to young drivers if we can, because this is when you first met our director, Sam, at that point, you were heavily involved in young driver road risk. Can you talk us a bit through that?
Olly Tayler 32:53
Of course, yes. So still very much a passionate advocate of road safety amongst young drivers, I have two sons of my own, they're both in their sort of early 20s. Now, but again, I can remember them getting into driving and starting to learn to drive and it was the one thing that utterly terrified me about them growing up was when they got behind the wheel because I have just seen so many times how easily it could go wrong and in fact, I will say both of them actually aren't bad drivers. Now, my oldest son, I won't embarrass him by naming him but my oldest son, I was on duty one evening as a duty traffic sergeant when he was he was still 17 and he managed to park his new car upside down on a country road and I got the call to the scene officer can deal with it because it was my son but fortunately, him in his passenger, okay, and he swerved to avoid something in... that's what his story is anyway, do I believe him? Hmmm. He'd swerved to avoid something in a country lane and he caught his front wheel in the verge and it basically dug in and it just flipped his car over. But not just because I'm his dad, but when I looked at the scene, there were two things that struck me and the reason that they both him and his friend got out unscathed. One they both have the seatbelts on and secondly, he was doing very low speed for the conditions because you could tell that by one where the car dug in and where it ended up, there was very little distance between the two. So it's certainly having travelling any speed and that was almost certainly what saved him in his friend from significant injury, he was able to get out. Although I suspect at the time, he had probably much rather he was immobilised on a stretcher and being taken in an ambulance when his dad turned up. But anyway, that's a whole nother story. So yeah, so young drivers are very much passionate mine. They are the highest-risk road user group, as I'm sure many people are aware, till it gets to about 24 when that risk starts to reduce. So it's about educating them, it's back to education, and it's about educating them to actually understand the risks that they face on the roads. A lot of young people, they think they're indestructible. Both my sons reckon they're indestructible at times. They're not at the end of the day, in particular when it comes to being out on the roads. They are very much anything but indestructible. But also their passengers as well. So it's getting their passengers and those not just the drivers, but the passengers to understand the risks that they're at from a poor young driver. I think with young drivers we find is that often is not, you're combining under-experience with over-confidence, which is a drastic mix. It really is and it ends far too often in tragedy, young lives cut short by road traffic collisions and again, when you look at the causations, they are so avoidable, that again, through some really effective education, to get young drivers to understand the risks that they put themselves and others out on the road, that actually, we can start to reduce these incidences of collisions significantly. So like you said, I first met your director through young drivers and road safety and it was a young driver initiative that was developed down in the West Country, I co-developed it with some other colleagues from other services and we looked at kind of turning road safety on its head slightly and approaching in a very different way. But more important than that was how it was delivered. So it's very easy for me to stand up in front of a group of teenagers and say, You must not do this, you must not do that. There are lots of ways you can kill yourself in a car. Those kids are going to go whatever, you're in a uniform, you know, you're the police, you're one of the enemy at the end of the day. So it was about looking at doing it differently. The decision was made and the concept that was developed was to work with driving instructors. To actually use driving instructors to deliver a consistent set of road safety messages on behalf of the police, the fire service, local authority, because they've got the unique ability of being on a one-to-one with new drivers. We can't do that. We couldn't do that in the police service. But, you know, the only other people who have one-to-one are parents, but actually how many young people that are listening what their parents say?
Hattie Hlad 36:51
Not very many!
Olly Tayler 36:52
My experience is not very many. You're absolutely right. Yeah, they don't listen, what do I know, I don't know anything about anything, let's be fair. So by using the driving instructor community, what we were able to do was we were able to deliver a consistent set of road safety messages to the next generation of drivers through the driving instructor community, which was fantastic and it was a very underutilised resource. They are road-safe professionals just the same as I was in my career and other people were in their career. But they had this unique relationship where they were sat one to one with them for 20/30/40 hours while they were learning to drive. What better time, as well as teaching a young driver the mechanics of learning to drive, which is vitally important that turning left, turning right, roundabouts, junctions, da da da, and actually should we not also be teaching the life skills that go alongside those mechanical skills, that when they haven't got their instructor next to them with that little voice of conscience in their ear going break about now, they make the right decision at the right moment in time. So the outcome they've got is a positive one or negative one.
Hattie Hlad 37:55
That's amazing. I mean, I can remember when I first pass my test, and you're driving for the first time and I kept looking to my left, thinking oh my god, where's my driving instructor but that is such a great idea and had that been something whilst I was learning to drive I would have snapped that up. So when I introduce you at the start of the episode, I included your very, very special honour of receiving the Queen's Police Medal. We know from the media that the late Queen herself asked you about your work with young drivers. Can you talk about the time when you receive such a prestigious award and what that moment was like meeting the Queen?
Olly Tayler 38:37
Absolutely. People have asked me over the years, particularly before I retired, you know what's, you know, the pinnacle of your career. Meeting the late Queen and be presented the Queen Police Medal by the Queen was absolutely the highlight of my policing career, 100%. There's nothing else but anywhere near it. So just so your listeners are aware and they may or may not be aware the Queen's Police Medal is an honour that's awarded for distinguished and exceptional service. A rare honour, it is a rare honour and particularly rare in the lower ranks. It's quite often you'll see chief officers, so Chief Constables, Deputy Chief Constables at the end of their career are awarded a Queen's Police Medal for their service and being in many cases quite rightly so. They've made the rank of Chief Constable or Deputy Chief Constable, they've given 30 plus years of public service and that's great, you know and all very well. So it's Christmas Eve 2014 and I was at home get ready for Christmas I'd kind of combination of work and some days off and a letter arrives in the post that day and I thought it's unusual because it had my rank on it. It's very unusual to get post at home with my rank on it very unusual for obvious reasons. But unusual it's quite a posh envelope. Anyway, so I opened it up and I'm reading through it it's at all you know how much of the Queen is delighted to announce you've been looked at it and thought that's actually quite a good wind up, whoever's done that and I had a feeling I knew who it was and I thought that's actually quite good. That looks quite genuine, come from the home office. So I kind of put it in the envelope and put it on the side. I didn't really think a huge amount more about it. It was Christmas Eve, we were at Christmas. We had family and stuff around and then it wasn't until the 31st of December that I got a phone call on my work phone
from a local journalist who said Olly, he said, glad you've answered. Any chance we can do a short interview about your QPM. I went, Oh, it's genuine then? I said I thought it was a wind-up? He said, No, no, no, it was in the list. So I was like, Okay, so, right. So it was then announced a New Year's Honours List. I went to Buckingham Palace with my family in October 2015 and just by pure chance, the late Queen was the royal who was going to be presenting the awards on that particular day. and there I was in Buckingham Palace in my finest uniform, being presented my Queen's Police Medal by the Queen herself and the one thing she asked me about was my work in road safety and in particular, young drivers. So whilst I never saw the nomination, I never saw the submission. Clearly, my work around young drivers and road safety had formed a significant part of that, because that's the bit that obviously she picked up on and chosen to ask me about when I attended the palace. So a rare honour, an absolute honour and yes, something certainly I'll never forget and I still have no idea who nominated me, it's a significant process to one to be nominated and two to actually get through the process of nominations. So, you know, if they are listening, then a huge, huge debt of thanks, I don't know if they will or not, I have no idea who it was. But if they are listening, then you know, I couldn't thank them enough, it was just totally out of the blue and what an honour to receive as a police officer, the highest award you can get as a serving officer, then so as a serving police officer, you can't get any higher and award in policing than the Queen's Police Medal, which is for the preserve of the police service. There are other awards who have colleagues who have OBE and MBEs and CBEs and knighthoods, and things like that, which is fantastic. But the QPM is for the preserve of serving officers and that's what makes it special to me.
Hattie Hlad 42:22
Congratulations.
Olly Tayler 42:23
Thank you so much. Thank you.
Hattie Hlad 42:25
Olly, we know you're at the end of a long eventful and high-achieving career, what is next for Olly Tayler,
Olly Tayler 42:31
Initially a bit of a break, a little bit of a rest and put my feet up, I'd like to do a little bit of travelling, if I get the chance as well. What I'd really like to do is to be able to use the skills and the skill sets and the skills I've built up over 30 years to actually help others. So I'd love to continue my work in road safety and young drivers. Look at sort of road safety in general, I'd love to tell my story, I'd love to do like, you know, I'd really like to like the after dinner speaking type stuff, you know, and tell the story I have to tell from being effectively jobless and homeless at 19, to being sitting in front of the Queen 21/22 years later, receiving the highest award you can get and the journey between those two, those two points is... there's a story, there's a story, there's definitely a story in there. But I'd like to be able to do some freelance work around, you know, actually something for once to be the author of my own destiny, and not have to worry about getting up early turn at six in the morning or doing a night shift or all the other things that come with public service. However, I don't regret one minute of my service. I loved it, absolutely loved being a police officer and I'd do it all again tomorrow. But it's time for me to move on to do something different and to do something, something for me, but use those skills I've built up over so many years and use the skills that I've got and those sorts of things. So really, it's about doing things that excite me and interest me and look to the future. So I don't see this as a retirement. I don't consider myself an OAP and retired. I'm a little bit young for that. So it's for me, it's about I've written one chapter, I've written a chapter, I've finished that chapter. I've gone to that and I'm now moving on to I'm gonna write the next chapter and do it like that. So...
Hattie Hlad 44:17
See what happens.
Olly Tayler 44:18
Absolutely yeah, see what happens, 100%!
Hattie Hlad 44:20
Amazing, well, thank you so much for being here. It's been an amazing conversation.
Olly Tayler 44:25
Oh, Hattie, thank you so much for having me. I've absolutely loved it and I hope your listeners have enjoyed it too.
Hattie Hlad 44:30
I'm sure they have. What an encaptivating first episode that was. There's so much we can take away from this conversation. As I said at the start, it was always going to be difficult to get all of Olly's experience and knowledge in one episode so we will definitely be inviting Olly back. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Driven By Excellence. We hope you enjoyed listening and if you did, please don't forget to click that follow button, leave us a review or share this episode with a colleague. For more information and to keep up to date with industry news head to our website pdtfleettrainingsolutions.co.uk