Proposals to address driver shortages in the bus and coach sector.

In connection with the ongoing work on the revision of the EU Driving Licence directive (2006/126/EG), we request that the Swedish presidency engages with the Commission to ensure that the revised directive is published in Q1 2023, and that the following points are taken into consideration, to address the serious concerns of the bus and coach sector.

In 2021 there were about 20,000 unfilled bus and coach driver positions across the EU.  The situation is continuing to get worse with driver vacancies increasing by 43% in the first 9 months of 2022. 

The bus and coach services are the backbone of the public transport sector and the safest mode on the road, and the industry works hard to achieve that. Education and training of our driving staff is a key focus – professional vocational drivers require considerably more training – before and after license acquisition – than private car drivers, and operators need access to a pool of individuals who can commit to a career in the industry at the earliest possible stage.  Today, at the time that many are making such choices, the role of bus or coach driver is not one which is available to them as the minimum age is still several years away from them.  This means that they are effectively lost to the industry.

Proposals to address driver shortages in the bus and coach sector.

The bus and coach industry is facing unprecedented and severe driver shortages across many member states, resulting in a level of service which is sub optimal - in many cases resulting in operators being unable to deliver a full timetabled service. With an ageing workforce which will be a much bigger problem in the next five years, a lack of young drivers is one of the main challenges for the public transport sector. We would therefore welcome the revision of current minimum age requirements for category D-licence holders to eighteen years from the current twenty-five.  We note that whilst some member states already have derogations from the EU minimum, in many cases these are still set at an age greater than 18.

This means that for young people considering a career, bus and coach driving is not accessible to them and the opportunities for operators to recruit and train drivers are significantly diminished.

Furthermore, we believe that the 50km limitation under the Driver Training Directive (Directive (EU) 2022/2561), where this is applicable, should also be removed to allow operators and drivers alike to benefit from greater flexibility of employment.

We do not consider that lowering the professional driver age to eighteen would compromise safety and a number of recent studies have concluded that there would be no adverse impact.  Safety remains the key focus within the public and collective transport sector.

Such actions would support the public transport sector in reducing its driver shortage, enabling it to run more frequent and reliable services and support Europe’s environmental targets by providing an attractive, sustainable alternative to the private car.

The current age requirements create a barrier and reduce opportunities for young people to enter the profession. In most cases, people will have made a choice for vocational training before the age of twenty-one. If they do not have the choice of public transport, they move to other sectors and as a result, potential drivers for our industry are lost.

Studies prove that safety is a matter of training, not of age

Evidence suggests that lowering the minimum professional driver age to eighteen is not a safety issue as safety is a matter of training, not of age. Statistics show that safety performance is not influenced by the age of entry into the profession (CARE Database, 2017). In fact, almost all accidents involving young drivers are caused by non-professional drivers (IRU, 2020; CARE database, 2017). A Dutch research study from the House of Representatives (Tweede Kamer, 2015) showed that there was no greater road safety and/or accident risk among younger drivers. The Swedish study “Young drivers. Analysis of data from Arriva Memo 08, version 04 (EN) (2022)” provides additional supporting evidence.

In conclusion, we believe that reducing the minimum professional driver age to eighteen across the EU, and removal of the “50-km limitation” for younger drivers, does not present any safety risk.  Such actions would enable the industry to have access to younger drivers who wish to have a career in our industry.  They would also facilitate succession planning for a sector with an ageing profession.  This would help to alleviate the current significant shortage of bus and coach drivers across much of Europe, thereby helping to restore service delivery standards to a level that meets the requirements of those who depend on the public transport for their journeys to work, studies, tourist travels etc, and encourage more people to shift modes from car to sustainable public transport.