New Motorcycle Licencing Laws
2nd European Driving Licence Directive
By Mike Forrester motorcycle.co.uk and Nigel Osborne Channel Rider Training
The 2nd and 3rd European Driving Licence Directives will directly affect all of us:
- If you are about to get a Motorcycle Licence (any level) it is about to get harder.
- If you are a Trainer - we feel for you.
Background
- The European Commission has committees.
- They issue 'Directives'
- 'Directives' must be implemented in the law of every member state. That is a requirement of being a 'Member State', you implement their Directives.
So, a 'European Directive' is not some meaningless irrelevant thing - it is what we will get as law.
The 2nd European Driving Licence Directive is done and dusted. It will pass into UK law in 2008/2009.
The 3rd European Driving Licence Directive is due to pass into UK Law 2011. But the draft is still being kicked around by The Council of Ministers (Dec 2006). If nobody makes enough fuss, it will pass through The Council of Ministers, and it's then too late to do anything - in 5 years it will be UK Law.
The 2nd European Driving Licence Directive
This big issue in this one is about the more difficult off-road manouvres test.
The EC 2nd Directive didn't actually call for this, our own DSA dreamt it up, gold plated it with every safety-pressure-group's preferences, then decided it was too dangerous to do on public roads! The DSA had until 2005 to implement the 2nd Directive, but because they'd added this stuff they couldn't do it in time. So the EC gave an extension to 2008. And because they made such a mess of building the new Multi-Purpose Test Centres, its now going to happen sometime in 2009.
Basically, there's a 'Brake and Swerve' as well as the existing 'Emergency Stop'. The 'Brake and Swerve' is just what it sounds like, and it must be conducted at 'sufficient speed' to make it a sensible test of motorcycle control. This is considered too dangerous to do on public roads, so many new test centres will have to be constructed, with sufficient off-road area to get up to speed and do this test.
There are a very few test centres nationwide which are suitable. Funding to build new ones is not yet clear. At the moment we doubt there'll even be one per county.
What can we do? Nothing, the 2nd Directive is already passed into UK Law.
[The awake among you may be wondering where a learner is supposed to practice the B&S maneouvre - a maneouvre considered too dangerous to be tested on a public road. One suspects that we will all practice on the public road, then be tested in a nice safe environment on a purpose-built off-road facility. Or are Training Centres supposed to be able to train this on their existing off-road facility? If you have never worked in the Motorcycle Training Industry, you will not be aware how incredibly difficult it is to find off-road facilities of good enough quality. (There are strict DSA requirements for size, flatness, surface, privacy... Any old car park will not do.)]
Here is an article by an Instructor who checked out the new test layout
Here is our 3rd Driving Licence Directive article.
References
http://www.bmf.co.uk/briefing/brake-swerve.html
http://www.bmf.co.uk/briefing/lobbyactionpackthirdecdrivinglicencedirective.html
http://www.mag-uk.org/
http://www.bmf.co.uk/
http://www.fema.ridersrights.org/
http://www.dsa.gov.uk/MPTC Some pages about it from DSA, saying how good for us it is going to be.
Article written by and Copyright © 2005-2009 Mike Forrester,
motorcycle.co.uk
and Nigel Osborne of
Channel Rider Training in Kent.
Reproduce or link to this in any way you like, as long as this copyright notice is retained.