I come from France and I really need my driving licence ASAP. But she went England and got a British drivers license, I am brilliant with Photoshop and will be able to do the neccicary changes to the license and put it in my name with my picture watermarks included now I am in South Africa, so do the South African DVLA contact the British.
If you're going to France with a valid foreign licence, you should not have any problems driving in the country - provided that you exchange you licence for a French one within the required time period.Also, cultural differences in driving should not be forgotten - these go beyond the driving-on-the-right/left-side-of-the-road adaption requirement. Before moving, it's also a good idea to read a theory book about driving in France before venturing the French roads. This is especially true if you're moving to a large city.Exchanging your driver's licenceAnyone living in France for more than one year, regardless of their country of origin, has to exchange their driver's licence for a French one.However, not everyone exchanging their licence needs to take a driving test.
France has agreements with many other States (and not only the EU/EEA but also 15 states in the US, and many other ones) so that the exchange is facilitated and does not require any exams. The MFE website has the complete list of countries that don't require a driving test for the licence exchange.
Best advice is to go ahead and have one with you. They don't take long to get and don't cost much.I normally rent away from airports because you can get better deals. I never get asked for my IDP (not a license, just a translation of yours) when I rent. If the person didn't speak enough English to read your driver's license, they would probably want it and rental counters at airports may be more likely to check.You're required to have one to drive in France, however, whether the rental counter asks for it or not. I've never been ticketed (or in an accident) but I'd rather carry one and never use it, than need it and not have one.You can save a little money and time by bringing extra passport photos to with you to AAA.
You are required to have the license. We have never been asked for it by a rental company but when we were stopped by police one time we had to show it. My husband had inadvertently turned on the fog lights on the car and we were stopped for that; the cop looked like he anticipated we would not be able to produce the IDP and seemed surprised when my husband had it and then instructed us on the law regarding fog lights and let us proceed without a ticket. I felt that if we had not had it, we would have had a ticket. An important consideration that is usually left unaddressed, is the insurance implication - if you have an accident, and do not have an IDP, it is very likely that your insurance underwriter ( whomever that may be ) will deny a claim based on the issue that you are an improperly licensed driver.
By the way, I spend a protracted period of time in Europe each year, and prior to my trip, my wife and I take IDP's, even if we have no plans to rent a car - one never knows if doing so might be desirable on the spur of the moment. I am renting a car next week in France and I will have an international driver's license. We are also driving in Monaco, Italy, and Switzerland.
The international driver's license through AAA is so cheap and easy, there is absolutely no reason not to do it. I believe Switzerland required one, but I don't recall that the others did.I would rather have more than I need versus less than a police officer may want when I am traveling in a foreign country.If it was a hassle to buy and cost 10x as much perhaps I would think otherwise. Thankfully, it is cheap and easy. About ten minutes and $20. No rental car company has ever asked me for my IDP but I always get it.
I was asked for it once by an officer who asked for it in English near Strasbourg so may if I had not had one, he would have been able to read my license in English. The instruction that I read at about the IDP said that the translation had to be notarized so I got the IDP because I could translate my license myself but I am not a notary and notaries in my area charge $20 per document and the IDP costs $20 and I could use it in multiple countries.
As to Steve's argument about insurance, as a former insurance investigator, do not underestimate the ways that an insurance company will find to deny a claim. Before I got my French driver's license, which was an interesting exercise in itself, I leased a car for an extended period and rented cars dozens of times in France but never was asked for an IDP. The law requires either an IDP or a translation of your license, which you could prepare with Google Translate and a computer printer if you wished.I've always viewed the IDP as a bit of a scam. Why should it expire after one year, necessitating yet another payment to get another, when the underlying license - the document that actually provides the right to drive - doesn't expire for another 3, 5 or 10 years? I've always viewed the IDP as a bit of a scam.
Why should it expire after one year, necessitating yet another payment to get another, when the underlying license - the document that actually provides the right to drive - doesn't expire for another 3, 5 or 10 years? It makes no sense.I've always felt that way, but since there's an AAA office down the road, I've started to get an IDP the last few years. And when I look at my IDP, I wonder why it's necessary in a country like France. It provides so little info, which info would be pretty obvious to even a non-English speaker.
It might be different in a country that has a different alphabet, like Cyrillic. So please enlighten me. If the IDP is a scam, who is running the scam? Is it the AAA in America? Perhaps the CAA in Canada? Or could it be the governments of France or Italy? Whichever or whoever it is, they must be getting richer by the minute as travellers pay the handsome sum of $15 for an IDP.
The $15 is over and above the many thousands of dollars a trip to Europe costs, not to mention the rental car cost plus fuel, tolls, etc.The objection to the necessity of needing an IPD for EVERY trip to France, a $15 IDP, is too funny. If one can afford multiple trips to France. Well, you can guess the rest. As I have already stated (and proven with link!), requirement for a notarized translation does not come from the French govt. This wording is on rental car website terms and conditions, but these do not appear to be tailored for each country's specific requirements, just generic terms and conditions for any international rental.Cost for IDP isn't $15 anymore, it's $20 + $11 for photos + 1 hour of time, hardly the nothing some people say getting it is. Added to the other trip related running around: stopping mail and setting up pet sitter and stopping newspapers and watering plants and arranging airport transport and notifying banks and credit cards and all the setting things up at work for your absence, for a piece of paper no one (in France) ever asks for.So I'm with K, just doing that translation thing. Note that things like corrective lenses, donor status, eye color, weight, height, are not even on European licenses, so for me that leaves 8 words to translate: expires, issued, sex, date of birth, driver's license, and the bold words are already (more or less) in French.If I were renting anything but an ordinary passenger car (like a motorcycle or a truck) I would get the IDP.