You've been in a car with Ed driving, why on earth would you want classes?
My UK licence is only valid for a year so I have to get a CT one. Unfortunately there's no "I've been driving in a country with far stricter driving tests for 11 years option," so tonight I have to waste 4 hours of my life taking classes with 16 year olds about "the alcohol problem" and "Natural Law." I don't even know what the latter is, so maybe I should be taking the classes after all. And then repeat tomorrow. Joy!
What fun. At least you can drive! Apparently it is much easier to get a license in Oz so I might hold out on learning to drive until I end up there...
The Natural Law
that will be how to act and behave to ensure that a trigger happy cop doesn't gun you down for scratching your nose without permission. (don't ever reach for the glove box, you've seen the movies)
I think there is a law here that says cyclists must apologise for existing.
Yup. I go through that every morning!
Americans have to do the test in the UK after a year too, that annoys them a lot until they try to use 'stick shift' and drive on the 'wrong side of the road'. Driving in the US is very easy compared to here!
Do you have to take the classes? Is this in lieu of a test, or do you also have to take the test after taking the classes?
8 hour classes plus multiple choice theory plus a driving test (Marie's only lasted ten minutes. Obviously at full charge). Joke!
My driving test was also quite short. I have a feeling yours will be, too...
My dad experienced the requisite driving test failures when we lived in England. Obviously more difficult there...
That sucks. In Canada I was able to simply swap my UK licence for a Canadian one no questions asked. I was even able to swap it back when I returned to England and mysteriously lost a few points in the process, Woo!
Ha ha! Now there's a good story! If I was French or German a straight swap would be fine, but the UK isn't for some reason. I can't understand why as our driving test seems more rigorous (watch me fail now!). Maybe it's because we insist on testing Americans?
The US is always doing silly things in the name of "it's not fair! they do it to us!" So that seems like a likely explanation.
I thought the main reason to be the following:
- UK driving licences are administered by an office of the national government
- US driving licences are administered by offices of individual US states
- the US constitution prohibits states from forming agreements with sovereign nations, because that is a power restricted to the federal government
If other European driving licences are deemed more valid than British ones, maybe there's still something I've missed. In reality, however, there are so many situations where the rules of the road are opposite in the UK and the US (ignoring the side of the road one drives on) that I actually feel it would be sensible for there to be much tighter rules on who could drive in each country on a foreign licence.
For example, the US requires a license; licences are no good.
Well Germany is a federal republic, so licences may be issued by the constituent states there also.
don't know about how it might work in France, which is a single state.
This discussion thread is closed.