Rigid drivers given a no-test artic licence
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by Miles Brignall Thousands of drivers who have held licences to drive rigid vehicles since 1991 will be given grandfather rights to drive artics from 1 January 1997 under new Government proposals to bring the UK in line with the rest of Europe.
Truck driving schools immediately condemned the licence bombshell which will allow anyone who held the old Class 2+3 licence before 1991 to drive artics. Many driving examiners and the industry as a whole knew nothing about the changes.
It also means that hundreds of rigid drivers who rushed to take their artic tests before new harsher regulations come in could have had an artic licence anyway.
The entitlement arises out of a European Union initiative that seeks to treat the drivers of drawbars the same as those driving artics. The problem stems from the fact British drivers were given the restricted C+E (drawbar entitlement) in 1993 whether they pulled a trailer or not.
Phil Weatherby of the Driving Licence Policy Unit at the Department of Transport confirms the changes are to be made as part of EU licence reforms. He points out that the EU makes no distinction between entitlements for drawbars and artics. "There will be drivers who don't drive drawbars who will gain (artic) entitlement," he says.
Nick Smith of training school Roadtrain describes the decision as "madness".
"Often drivers who are deemed by their instructor not to be up to driving artics take the rigid test," he says. "It is perfectly reasonable for those who have driven drawbar units to be given the attic entitlement, but there will be thousands of drivers who have never pulled a trailer in their lives suddenly finding themselves licensed to drive a 46ft artic.