A separate driver's license for classic cars?
11/04/2016
In our part of the world, there has been a special rule for obtaining a driving license for decades. If the driving test is taken with an automatic vehicle, then only automatic vehicles may be driven afterwards; a car with a manual gearbox is forbidden to those who have passed the automatic test.
The legislator apparently took a missing pedal, i.e. the clutch pedal, as an opportunity to introduce a separate driving license sub-category. The logic was that anyone who had not learned to use the three pedals could not be trusted to do so.
Of course, one wonders whether the line has been drawn in the right place and what this will look like in the future when more and more assistance systems (and the automated clutch could also be described as such) make the driver's "work" increasingly easier.
What about parking sensors or even a parking assistant? If you pass the test with such a system, will you no longer be allowed to drive cars that have to do without these aids? Or what about ABS? Or ESP? Or traction control? In fact, some modern drivers would be completely overwhelmed if they had to drive a 40 or 50-year-old car through snow and ice in winter for the first time in their career.
Perhaps at some point a special driving license will be invented for driving non-assisted cars. Not that we are aiming for such a thing or would like to have one. But it wouldn't be entirely illogical ...
