*Yes, that’s how it’s spelled. Spelt?
I got my British Driver’s Licence last month. Here in the UK you can drive on an international license for up to 12 months, but then must apply for a UK one. A couple of interesting issues came out of this process (well, interesting to me, but we all know I’m a nerd who actually thinks the history of spreadsheets is fascinating – really. Look it up.) .
One: It is ridiculous how much easier it was for me to get my new DL than it is for my friends in Oxford. Ridiculous. They are Canadians who have lived the last twenty years in the US and moved to the UK three months prior to me. They started the UK DL process months before I did, and are now only at the stage of having a provisional licence (and that was by the skin of their teeth to get even that far along before the 12 month period was up). Because their last license was American, they had to go through a completely different process from mine. It seems that Great Britain will allow people from a certain list of countries to simply replace their old DL with a UK version. That list is mainly UK territories, former Commonwealth countries, and a few seemingly random countries including Andorra, North Macedonia, and Korea. But not the USA.
Turns out this sort of thing happens all the time with the UK, Canada, and the States, where one country is allowed leeway or holds a different status when dealing with another’s laws. But not necessarily always in Canada’s favour. When we were moving to Britain during COVID, the UK considered the US as a ‘green’ country, while Canada was listed as ‘amber’ (and therefore under greater scrutiny and restrictions). And that was at a time when Canada’s stats were better than either of the other countries in question.
So my friends continue to struggle through sticky red tape. How frustrating.
The second surprise was the type of licence I was allowed. 95% of all cars sold in Britain are manual transmission – everyone learns to drive stick. When I went to apply for the new DL, I was given two options: I could do a road test and get a blanket DL that allowed me to drive any automobile, or I could just apply for the Canadian DL to be swapped for a British one, in which case I would be issued a license limiting me to automatic transmissions only. I opted for the latter (I have driven a stick-shift maybe a dozen times in my life, and never on the lefthand side of the road), so I received my DL in the mail within 10 days.
Who thinks this stuff up?