News story: Changes to motorcycle, lorry and bus driving test rules

The Driving Standards Agency (DSA) has published a response to the public consultation about these changes that ran earlier this year.

Lorry, bus and coach drivers

The main changes affecting lorry, bus and coach drivers will be:

removing the need to use a vehicle with 8-forward gear ratios for large test vehicles (category C)
allowing people who take a lorry or bus test (category C and D) in an automatic vehicle to get 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)
Existing drivers

You can also get this manual entitlement when you exchange or upgrade your licence if you’re already a lorry, bus or coach driver and have a manual licence in any of those categories.

These changes will start in January 2014.

Motorcycle riders

From January 2014, DSA will reduce the minimum engine power requirement for medium motorcycles (category A2) from 25kW to 20kW.

There will be more changes from 2019. DSA 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 180kg

Read the full report on the consultation.

More information


Become a lorry or bus driver
The motorcycle practical riding test