Saint Lucians Moving Away From Manual Transmission Vehicles

Saint Lucian drivers appear to be moving away from obtaining vehicles with manual gearboxes in favour of those with automatic transmissions. The requested figures from the Ministry of Transport regarding vehicle registration trends were not immediately available. However, the President of the National Council on Public Transportation (NCOPT), Godfrey Ferdinand, disclosed that automatic transmission vehicles are the trend among council members. “If we keep to our main supplier, the vehicles are manual, but anyone that is importing, most times get automatics,” Ferdinand told St. Lucia Times. He estimated that among minibus drivers, between five and ten percent of the vehicles have automatic transmissions, and the number is increasing. Ferdinand prefers the automatic transmission. He acknowledged that people who do not share his preference assert that automatic transmissions do not have the power of manuals. But, the NCOPT President dismissed that notion as false. In this regard, he spoke of the need to regularly service vehicles with automatic transmissions and properly use the vehicle.  “When you are going up a hill with a load of persons, you do not just leave the vehicle in ‘D’. You apply the required gear to go up the hill, and then you would have no...