In future, it should be the standard that driving lessons take place in cars with automatic transmission. Manual unloading should be much more expensive, the EU believes.
The vast majority of Danes have taken out their driving license in a car with a manual transmission. But in a decade where the number of driving licenses for automatic transmissions has increased by 600 percent, this should no longer be the standard.
On the contrary, the EU will now completely turn the tables on the driving licence issue and enforce automatic transmission as standard.
This is written by Swedish Dagens Industri .
The newspaper points out that in Sweden it is already difficult to find cars for the driving test that are not equipped with a manual transmission.
This also means that legally driving a car with a manual transmission will become significantly more expensive. The EU is proposing that it will cost 7 extra driving hours.
In fact, it is similar to the Danish rules that were recently introduced. Here in Denmark, the sign is just the opposite. With the new rules, you can easily get a driving license in a car with an automatic transmission, but if you want to be able to drive anything else, it requires exactly seven hours in a car with a manual transmission.
However, the starting point in Denmark is still that as a driving school student you take both driving lessons and the driving test in a car with a manual transmission. If not, you must have a so-called 'code 78' on your driving license.
The letter means that you are not allowed to drive anything other than passenger cars with automatic transmissions. Therefore, if you are stopped in a car with three pedals, it is equivalent to the penalty for not having obtained a driving license.
Here in Denmark, 'code 78' is far from the only thing new drivers have to deal with. The EU wants to change the driving license rules, which have otherwise been largely the same since 2006.
However, the Danish government has pre-empted the government in Brussels in some areas. Certain special rules on the driving license area, which the Danish Road Traffic Agency took over from the police in 2021, disappeared already on July 1 last year.Read more about it here .
And although the EU does not yet have the new driving license rules in place, the law has already had to be adjusted significantly. Among other things, a proposal to ban the youngest drivers from driving between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m. has been withdrawn.
