


They might never need to know how to drive a manual. In essence, this means that they are legally permitted to.

Owners of an automatic licence can only drive automatic vehicles, and it would be an offence for them to get behind the wheel of a vehicle with a manual gearbox. Those who pass their driving test in a manual car will receive a licence to drive category B vehicles.
#Uk driving test automatic or manual drivers#
QOTD: Should All Drivers Be Re-Tested Every 10 Years? Pass your test in this rare Shelby Cobra auto in the UK and you still can’t legally drive a stickĪnd maybe that’s fine, because the majority of people who pass their tests in 2030 won’t be car geeks buying up shonky old manual cars for weekend fun. Date 20.06.17 Owners of a full driving license can drive any type of car or small van, with a manual or automatic transmission on the road. You do not need to pass another theory test if you’re upgrading an automatic car licence to a manual licence. In the UK, drivers aged between 16 and 19 usually learn in a manual car, with only around 40,000 of the 720,000 driving tests sat per year for an automatic licence. You can book your driving test when you’ve passed your theory test. Regarded as the norm would be to learn in a manual car, it has been this way since the driving test started in 1935, but in recent years automatic driving has been growing in popularity, this is because it is much easier to learn and more automatic cars are available. The procedure for taking your driving test is exactly the same, whether youre in an automatic vehicle or a manual vehicle. Here we discuss the pro’s and con’s of both. The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), the UK government body that controls driving tests, says the number of people taking their practical driving exam in a two-pedal car has grown massively in recent years, and you can probably put most of that down to the huge rise in popularity of dual-clutch transmissions, which have finally managed to turn British drivers on to the appeal of “automatic” transmissions.īut where many low and medium-priced cars in the UK are still available with a choice of manual or paddle-shift transmissions, the growing popularity of electric vehicles (soon to be made compulsorily popular with the country’s 2030 ban on new ICE sales) means more and more Brits will be learning in cars that don’t require them to show understanding of how to use a clutch or change gears. A manual licence covers both types of cars while an automatic licence only covers automatic cars. Manual cars are gradually giving way to automatic cars.
