Changes to automatic and manual PCV licences

DVSA announced yesterday that the Motor Vehicles Driving Licences (Amendment) Regulations 2014 will come into force on 10 April 2014. From this date all new vocational PCV licence holders who pass their PCV test in an automatic vehicle will be issued with a manual CAT D licence rather than an automatic licence provided they have passed a manual test in another category of vehicle either CAT B or C.

These regulations will also apply to existing automatic licence holders and we are currently awaiting confirmation from DVLA as to the procedure to be followed for existing automatic PCV licence holders to enable them to receive an upgraded manual licence. Provided they already hold a manual licence in another vehicle category either CAT B or C. Further details will be issued to Members as soon as we receive them from DVLA.

This item courtesy of CPT Newsline.

My bus number (if any): RML2532

Looks like Roy. Gearbox repairs will be on the increase

My bus number (if any): 1083

Depends on what type of vehicle you are talking about, since new buses and coaches are auto anyway what difference will it make unless a driver happens to be an enthusiast and drives old manual vehicles. In any case it is rather unfair to suggest that a person with an auto licence is not going to be capable of driving a crash box or similar older vehicle. As someone who learnt on crash box lorries over 40 years ago and has worked with guys who have not had that experience, I know they would be well capable of driving a manual crash gearbox vehicle without wrecking the box.

Far too much macho comment is made of the auto versus manual driving capability, with modern large vehicles it is essential to have the use of sophisticated auto boxes so that a driver can concentrate on what is going on around him or her in todays traffic density if working professionally.

Auto boxes far to complicated for there own good. Can't beat a manual box. I see it everyday in my job. Gearbox repairs are on the increase.i only have to talk to my guy who repairs gearboxes .He says things have never been better.i just say what I feel.its very surprising watching people drive. You spot a lot of mistakes in driving skill. I think in the psv/hgv sector things will be interesting. It's all well auto boxes, but the cost in fixing it is mind blowing . If things are to expensive the sector may revert back to manual.it will be interesting to see what happens .
Tony

My bus number (if any): 1083

Virtually NO modern buses or coaches are built with manual boxes; there's 100% reliance on the computer dictating the right gear at the right time. Yes, auto boxes ARE expensive when they go wrong, typically on a bus every 500,000 miles, but with regular servicing they last a lot longer.

The same can be said with cars. The main problem there is lack of servicing, because the makers say "sealed for life". My Range Rover is such a vehicle. Sealed for life, happened to be 120,000 miles! However, experience has shown a regular gearbox oil and filter change could have prevented that. My auto Chrysler Voyager has done over 150,000 and the box is still good.

The number of vehicles on the road thee days is minute, so I'd suggest the risk to gearboxes is minimal; they are likely to be driven by enthusiast who CARE about what they are driving. Any modern "heavy" with a manual box will have synchromesh anyway.

How many of us actually know HOW to drive a pre-select properly?

My bus number (if any): RML2532

Then it seems a pointless exercise in changing it really. Let's hope they don't muck up the changes like it did when it changed from paper to the new style

My bus number (if any): 1083

Tony

I agree the technology with auto boxes and a lot of other vehicle related equipment is sometimes too sophisticated, but we cannot stop what is seen as progress so we have to live with it. I loved driving manual box vehicles years ago, but I have owned many auto box vehicles without any giving me problems. Roy is right about maintenance, that is the key to a lot of problems when there is not regular servicing or preventive maintenance. I do not drive professionally at the present time, but my own experience in the past on high mileage NatEx vehicles is that they run huge distances without problems from autoboxes even with the amount of sophisticated control ( Volvo I shift etc ). Remember these vehicles cover mileages that few privately owned vehicles would achieve in 50 years or so, so the there must be some expectation of problems arising after a period of time under the conditions a commercial vehicle operates within.

I think we should be careful when talking about spotting mistakes in driving skill, better to concentrate on ones own defensive driving than forever criticise others for driving in a certain way. I worked with a lot of guys double manning, we all drove in our own way, the important issue was driving safely and defensively thereby avoiding accidents that would not have been the drivers fault even if one had occurred. Again I think this is where the auto box is paramount to enabling the professional driver nowadays to concentrate on what is happening around him and her without faffing around with a stick trying to find a gear in an old box. Spare me the hundreds of clutch applications and a hot manual box in heavy town traffic.

"Spare me the hundreds of clutch applications and a hot manual box in heavy town traffic." Maybe that's why LT went over to pre-selectors quite early on!

Having owned and drive my GS for 45 years, with a constant mesh box and double de-clutching for every gear change, it can be tiring, especially a full day on the 433 Surrey Hills Leisure Bus, every summer Sunday for 5 years!! Round London, forget it, even as much as I like driving the bus. Give me an auto any day.

Why the changes? To bring us in line with the EU licence and entitlement. Remember, it was EU regs that done away with the different double and single deck licences not so many years back. I appreciate it's a different kill driving manual vs auto, but if you can use a clutch in your car, why not in something bigger? You might as well campaign about keeping annual tests for pre-1960 vehicles or insist on paying VED for pre-73 vehicles... Things have to change, sometimes for the better.

My bus number (if any): RML2532

I will freely admit to selecting auto by choice in any RM/L which has an operational system and also to preferring the option in London traffic.
However every time given the choice by one of the companies I drive for, I will go for a manual rather than an automated box. The Volvo I shift, strangely particularly when fitted to a Renault, is without doubt the best of the lot and nearly there. All the automated boxes have a manual override option, but it never seems to offer quite the same sense of control that a true manual box does, there always seems to be the feeling that it is going to make an unplanned change for you.
As far as constant mesh boxes are concerned, I suppose they are somewhat akin to riding a motorbike. They wake you up and force you to take notice of the road in a way that synchro or automated/automatic boxes never can. They really do force you to plan ahead, to watch for the rise and fall of an undulating gradient, to look carefully at a roundabout and to approach it more slowly, to remember long-ago-learned, but now unfashionable, lessons about descending a hill in the same gear one would climb it.
Perhaps the good thing about automated boxes is that if the exhaust brake is selected, then the box will downchange as soon as the brake pedal is touched.It will certainly do it a lot more smoothly than a Voith.
I couldn't possibly recommend copying this guy (below), nor even maintain that one is likely to need his skills with twin constant mesh gearboxes, but it does raise the question of the ability of a manual car licence holder to cope with heavy vehicle gearboxes. The reason for the change to licensing being the increasing rarity of manual heavy vehicle transmissions. However there are still plenty of range-change splitter gearboxes about for newly qualified drivers to encounter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol7StdtHEMc

And An AEC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0vmA4NYoTM

I got a manual PSV licence without ever having driven a manual(a mistake on on the application form that went unnoticed)! The first time was an old AEC or Bristol and I managed fine. The vehicle I really learned to drive manually though was a Peterbilt. Left hand drive, split box with sixteen gears (pull away in seventh) while watching the 10' bonnet in front of you and a vehicle with the turning circle of the Titanic. Eventually managed to operate the clutch correctly with no grating of the gears what-so-ever but we were destroying a clutch every 4000 miles so I called Texas to ask why we kept having problems. Aha said the nice man. You only use the clutch to pull away. After that it is clutch-less changes every time. Back to learning but got it right in the end. Just a matter of getting the engine speed right, or as the nice Texan said, "you have to be as one with a Peterbilt"

He also said they were designed to be driven on straight roads, not around British Towns

I miss that Lorry.

I always liked the Metrobus Voith box. With the exception of Limit third, no manual or semi auto provision on them.

When did LT last have manual boxes in large quantities?

My bus number (if any): RML2276 M1001 T806

Just watched the videos Roy. Wow That Mack gear change looks awkward! The Peterbilt wasn't that bad. Try

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5c6cIx4hMk

although mine (I didn't own her but she will always be mine) was a Detroit Diesel, she pretty much the same. Notice he has the fork lift style knob on the steering wheel. That helped as you tended to drive with one hand on the wheel and one on the gear stick. Someone said they are not legal in this country and have seen plenty of lorries but never seen one on a bus

On the AEC video the driver was, as my instructor said, "pawing" at the steering wheel. I was taught to grip with one hand to push the wheel upwards and slide my other hand to mirror it around the wheel as you fed it so your hands touched at the top, change grip and continue pulling until your hands touch at the bottom. I still tend to drive a bus like that, where as a car it is one handed, elbow through window etc.

I think my LT instructor was on here once, gentleman by the name of Pete Terry.

Oh and another change to the driving test is the theory must now be taken in English or Welsh. No other language is allowed from April.

My bus number (if any): RML2276 M1001 T806

Ha David,

The old push & pull so beloved by driving instructors! Apart from exercising proper control the main thing is it makes you corner at a reasonable speed. If you have to ‘cross arms’ it means you don’t have time to ‘push & pull’ which means you’re cornering too fast. I was taught the same and still use it much of the time (in commercial vehicles) and oddly enough it does lead to a more relaxed manner of driving.

The funny thing about this thread is that licence changes have been going on all the time and I can imagine people in previous generations having similar discussions as we have in this day and age. The one change that alarmed me was the removal of the Double Deck entitlement, I always felt that was the dodgy one. It’s all very well driving something slightly longer than you’re used to but a double decker has the real possibility of hurting people if you ‘forget’ you’re driving one and try to go under something too low. I always believed that that was something that needed to be drummed into drivers, but hey ho, we don’t really have them in Europe so that’s the first one to go out of the window. I trained in a RT and can well remember driving along main roads in London and going under rail bridges. “How high is this!” the instructor would bark every now and then and you’d shout back 15’9 or whatever. And you’d better know. It taught you to keep looking up and think about what you were doing. RT’s are a great example of perplexing driving licence changes. Depending on when you took your test; they’re Pre-Select one minute, then they’re Manuals then they’re Auto! Just goes to show the powers that be have never ceased ‘tinkering’. Regards to all.

Danny.

Alec Purkiss was one of the LT instructors I knew. He told me when the trainer bus went out of Chiswick it'd be "turn left out of the gates, then take the next available road on the left". the first was a dead-end, so was the second. The third had a low bridge, the fourth was the lights that led to Chiswick Park Station.

Then after a day's driving, back at Chiswick he'd rollick a driver for "driving down The Pavement at Clapham. Driver would look blank, then Alec explained that The Pavement was the name of the road by Clapham South Station!!

Another example was a driver who made a rude hand signal at another driver. Alec told him to pull over, leave the cab and catch the next bus back to Chiswick. The hand signal was not in the Highway Code and LT would not employ drivers who used illegal hand signals.

In those days drivers were taught not just to pass the test, but how to drive.

My bus number (if any): RML2532