For those of you with manual transmission ‘phobia’ and had put off sitting for your driving license because of this, good news is in store for 2012.
Datuk Abdul Rahim Bakri, the Deputy Transport Minister recently announced that starting May this year, where will be another type of Class D driving licences which is the automatic transmission one. Currently, there is only 1 type of regular Class D licence which is the manual transmission type. This means that to pass the test, you must be able to drive a manual car with which will allow you to drive an automatic car by default.
The driving curriculum will be revised and when it is done, it will allow drivers to learn and take the test in an automatic transmission car which means that the driver can only drive cars which come with an automatic gearbox. To be fair to the operators of driving schools, they will not be rushing to implement the new automatic car test so as to allow them time and space to replace their current fleet of manual cars.
Despite the new curriculum, the learner (L) drivers can still choose to take their practical test in either one of the transmissions. This will surely be a great step forward as it was found recently that older citizens and women would prefer to take their tests in an automatic car.
