News story

Changes to motorcycle, lorry and bus driving test rules

Changes will be made to some driving test rules for motorcyclists, lorry, bus and coach drivers from 10 April 2014.

From:
Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency
Published
19 March 2014

This news article was withdrawn on

This news story was published in March 2014. The information is no longer current.

Check the current guidance for motorcycles and mopeds you can use for the tests.

Lorry driver

Lorry, bus and coach drivers

From 10 April 2014, the main changes affecting lorry, bus and coach drivers will be:

  • removing the need for 8-forward gear ratios for large test vehicles (category C, C+E)
  • allowing people who take a lorry or bus test (category C, C+E, D, D+E) in an automatic vehicle, to get a manual entitlement for those vehicles if they already have a manual entitlement for cars, lorries or buses, with or without trailers (category B, B+E, C, C+E, C1, C1+E, D, D+E, D1+E)
  • letting car (category B) licence holders drive large trikes above 15KW power if they are aged 21 or over

Motorcycle riders

From 10 April 2014, the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) will introduce the following changes for motorcycle riders to allow more flexibility:

  • reducing the minimum engine power requirement for medium motorcycles (category A2) from 25kW to 20kW
  • letting car (category B) licence holders drive large trikes above 15KW power if they are aged 21 or over

There will be more changes from 31 December 2018. DVSA will:

  • raise the minimum engine power requirement for large motorcycles (category A) from 40kW to 50kW
  • introduce a minimum mass weight requirement for large motorcycles (category A) of 175kg

More information

Updates to this page

Published 19 March 2014

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