Hi guys.
As of January the DSA are making some changes to cat A, C, D licences (bike, truck, bus) the bike ones I'm not too interested in as I don't hold a bike licence, but the main points are: if you are a qualified truck or bus driver for any number of years (or future) and you trained and took your test in a Automatic they are planning to upgrade your licence to a full manual without any extra training or assessment so long as at a minimum you can drive a manual car. Driving a manual bus or truck is totally different to driving a car, many different variables, different gearbox types, types of shift, etc. and in my opinion as such extra training is a must, being able to handle a large vehicle with just a go & stop peddle is totally different to being able to handle a large vehicle, aswell as a heavy temperamental clutch, and heavy complicated gearbox of upto 12 or even 16 gears and in no way relate to a simple 5 or 6 speed car.
There was a government consultation on this, under-publicised, hardly heard of, then after only 339 responses they passed these changes and they will be coming into force in Jan.
In my opinion this is inherently wrong and dangerous and should be re-considered, I don't hope to reach 100,000 to trigger a commons debate but if I exceed 350 then clearly I exceed the consultation total and as such the DSA should re-consider or re-open the consultation. Please sign my petition to make sure the people driving heavy buses and trucks through your town and past your houses are adequately qualified to operate the vehicles they are driving.

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/56389

Thanks for the heads up.
I'm not effected but i know a few people i should mention it too.

So all that extra work passing manual truck and bus tests was for nothing! Great.

Would like to see an automatic driver handling a Guy Chieftan doublecker.

... or a Guy Arab even !! A corpy Daimler with a pre-selector box might be a laugh. "What's that pedal on the left for?"

I work for a training company in Bromborough and although I don't agree with the automatic upgrade on the licenses there is a course that all bus and truck drivers MUST have by law called Driver CPC. This does have a module included that covers practical driving so if drivers or employers aren't comfortable with the auto upgrade that can be undertaken. Hope this isn't taken as me trying to advertise but if anyone wants to find out about that course just google Driver CPC there's many places that offer the training if you are interested. (P.S. other search engines are available haha!)

The CPC covers walk round checks and loading the vehicle, more of a theory than a practical which driving a manual bus or coach is! Not knocking the CPC, it's mandatory nowadays, another money spinner for the government but it's nothing to do with this stupid idea!

Most of the Driver CPC course is theory but there is 1 module that is a practical session. We don't offer it as it would cost us more then the course is worth to use one of our trucks but we do subcontract it out. If I remember rightly it's module 3B but it is only 3 and half hours long so I'm not sure how much could be learnt from that.

Hope any bus drivers have completed their CPC though because their deadline was up in September gone. Truck drivers you've got till Sept 2014, not very fair that it's got different dealdlines but hey that's our government for you.