Heavy goods vehicles may have an engine, pedals and a steering wheel but they are extremely different to drive compared to a conventional car, and the nature of how they are operated makes HGV courses essential to drive them safely.
This is not just about lorries being considerably heavier and thus having much longer stopping distances and response times, but also in terms of how long and how often they are driven, requiring vehicle knowledge and discipline to ensure that they are still safe to drive.
Many modern lorry routes are hundreds of miles long and are designed to be driven for considerable distances.
This is rather notable, given that the first lorry ever made travelled less than two miles during one of its small number of trials.
In 1770, former military engineer Nicolas Joseph Cugnot developed a working vehicle powered by a steam engine based on a theoretical concept devised by Denis Papin.
The vehicle was known as the “fardier a vapeur” (steam cart or wagon) and was designed as a way to transport extremely heavy equipment that was difficult at the time to move by horse-drawn carriages.
In theory, it was meant to be capable of travelling 4.8 miles per hour whilst carrying four tonnes, but in practice, its maximum speed was closer to 2.25 mph.
Its longest journey was around six miles, from the centre of Paris to the Parisian suburb of Meudon, which took well over three hours in practice.
It was unstable due to only having three wheels and very bad weight distribution. It could not traverse rough terrain or steep hills, which was a problem in a world before effective road construction.
Every 15 minutes the boiler fire would go out, meaning that it needed to be relit, causing journeys to be exceedingly slow. It was also said to have caused the first-ever car accident in 1771 when it hit a wall.
In 1772 the project was abandoned but Mr Cugnot received a pension from King Louis XV for his work, until the French Revolution of 1889 forced him into exile.