HAVE AUTO WILL DRIVE ...

Automatic transmission driving licences are long overdueSHIFTING GEAR:  Will it be tougher to pass the test now?

BACK when I was covering the transport beat in the late 1980s and 1990s, I told the then Transport Minister Datuk Seri (now Tun) Dr Ling Liong Sik that I didn’t own a driving licence. In fact, I did not even know how to drive.
He asked me to sign up for driving lessons and said that he would personally be the “tester” when the time came for the practical driving test.
I remember telling him back then that I would only do it if I were taught using an automatic transmission car and tested in one too. He had laughed at the suggestion.
A decade or so later, I am reading that the Transport Ministry is to implement the automatic transmission driving licence this May. A new driving curriculum would enable learner drivers to learn to drive and take a test in an automatic transmission car.
Deputy Transport Minister Datuk Abdul Rahim Bakri said the ministry also needs to give the driving school operators time to replace the manual transmission cars with the automatic ones.
It has taken the government far too long to implement this, when automatic transmission cars have become very popular here since the 1990s.
The first vehicle to have this technology was a custom-made limousine designed by Michael Felix Picone for General Douglas MacArthur as a gift. The limousine was fabricated from three Cadillac sedans.
Picone had actually invented automatic transmission during World War II for a tank so that the operator could use his left foot to fire 50mm shells while looking through the cross hairs of his tank periscope.
North America introduced cars with automatic transmission as far back as the 1950s.
My U.S. graduate brother returned home from his studies in the late 1980s with an automatic transmission licence. He eventually succeeded in teaching himself to drive a manual transmission car but it cost my late father the gearbox of his manual transmission Mitsubishi Gallant.
Some countries have long introduced separate licences for automatic cars.  A manual licence will allow the driver to drive both manual and automatic vehicles but an automatic transmission licence holder can only drive automatic transmission cars.
In Singapore for example, a Class 3 licence holder can drive both manual and automatic transmission cars while a Class 3A licence holder allows you to drive automatic transmission cars only.
There are already concerns here that the introduction of the automatic transmission licence would see the increase in the number of cars on the already congested roads of most cities and towns in the countries.
I personally think it is the ease of buying cars, with some institutions offering 100 per cent financing, that contributes to the increase.
I foresee an increase in the number of licenced drivers. Rahim himself anticipates that more people, especially older learners and women, would prefer to drive a car with automatic transmission as it is a lot easier.
Men, too, prefer to drive automatic transmission cars these days.
My brother, who can drive both manual and automatic transmission cars now, prefers his own ride to be automatic. When we have to hire an MPV for long distance travels, he would insist on automatic transmission too.
I wonder, however, if the authorities would make it tougher now to get the driving licence, now that it is easier to drive.
I would rather that the authorities look at the current syllabus to also include defensive driving. Some international reports showed that those who attended defensive driving courses can reduce accident rates by as much as 80 per cent.
Whatever it may be, the move is better late than ever. I may just get my wish to be taught how to drive in an automatic transmission car and be tested in one too but unfortunately, Dr Ling will not be the one who would be the tester.

* First appeared in NST Comment pages on January 20, 2012