Authority to issue new driving license

By Muluken Yewondwossen - Capital

10 December, 2007

The Federal Transport Authority is set to change the current graded licenses to professional driving licenses. Kassahun Hailemariam, Transport Authority director general, said, “The significance of this change is to minimize car accident and to adopt international standards.”

The new licenses have 6 professional categories with each thing their own training formats and examinations.
The first one is motor bicycle driving license; the person who has this license can drive motorbike. Auto mobile driving license permits one to drive only up to twelve seater vehicles.

The third driving license category is the public transport vehicles driving license which has three levels. 24 seater (including driver), from 25 to 44 seaters is the other and the third level allows one to drive more than 44 seaters. And the person who has this license can drive the first two levels.

Dry load truck license is the other category that has also got three levels. The first one is 13,000 kg dry load trucks license while the second ranges from 13,001 to 28,000 kg and more than 28,000 kg of dry load truck license falls into the third level. The third level driver can drive the rest two levels as well.

Yet another category is the liquid carrier truck driving license, which has got two levels in it. The first level allows one drive trucks with a holding capacity of 18,000 liters (not including the truck’s weight) and the other license is for bigger liquid carrier trucks. In the same way as the previous two, someone with the second level license can also drive trucks with lesser capacity. There is also a special driving license with lowest, middle and heavy licensing levels.

Ato Kassahun said, “The theory and practical training time depends up on the kind of driving license. In addition the authority facilitates a new way of examination for a customer. On this new way nobody can get a license without a training and exam.”

The previous law required people to wait a year or two before they could try to advance to a higher grade. To the contrary, the new law allows getting any category license when the client finished their training.

According to Kassahun, the new law will be endorsed and implemented with in a short time.