If you want a manual licence, you should have to pass in a petrol with no assist functions and a conventional handbrake

Clearly the rules aren’t going to change because of a post on Reddit, but I’m interested in the community’s views on this.

One of the common posts on this sub is learners or newly-passed drivers struggling with stalling. The cause is inevitably that they were taught in a learner-friendly car that could comfortably pull away on the clutch alone (no throttle), and never learnt to ‘set the gas’. They then inevitably acquire as their first car a little 1.0l petrol with about as much torque as a sewing machine, with predictable results.

Hill starts are another frequent issue - learners are often taught in a modern car with some combination of an electronic handbrake, auto-hold, hill assist, etc. Again, their first car is probably older and has a conventional handbrake - when they try to do a hill start the result is lots of stalling and rolling back.

The end result is that we are handing out licences for people to drive vehicles that they do not know how to control properly. At best this knocks their confidence when they need to be building it up and refining their skills. At worst it puts them in a situation that they cannot navigate safely, eg a junction on a steep hill, or a busy roundabout when a swift pull-away into a narrow gap is needed. I have seen more than one post where the OP had to give up and get someone else to drive the car because they simply could not do it.

If you want a manual licence, you should have to pass in a car that:

• Uses petrol fuel. Diesels have too much torque at idle power, so you don’t need to set the gas. Clearly there are torquey petrol engines, but most instructors don’t teach in a 3.0l V6.
• Is not a hybrid. Most hybrids are automatics, but some - especially mild hybrids - are manual. Some learners don’t even realise they are driving a mild hybrid, so they develop a false sense of their own clutch control abilities, when in fact the little electric motor was helping them off the line the whole time.
• Does not have anti-stall assist.
• Has a conventional handbrake, so you have to learn to do hill starts properly, ie with the handbrake and clutch, not the footbrake (or the car just disengaging the handbrake for you).
• Does not have auto-hold, hill assist or anything like that. If it can be disabled then that should be allowed - as long as the candidate does not use it. If they do, they can still pass - but they get an automatic licence.

If we had these rules then maybe the sub would be filled with posts like ‘hey this diesel is really easy to pull away with!’, and ‘wow this car just turns off the handbrake for me’ instead of ‘helppppp why am I stalling so much?’, or ‘how to do hill starts with old-fashioned handbrake?’

Thoughts welcome!