Thursday 6th November 2003

European Driving Licences

It will be a reality one day - no more nipping off to France for a bit of law breaking

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It should come as no surprise to any of us - the EU plans to harmonise driving licences throughout the community in the same way as it wants to harmonise everything else.

Harmonisation has already been achieved for

categories of driving licence conditions for the issue of a driving licence minimum ages for the various categories driving tests minimum standards of physical and mental fitness.

but there are no agreements on

• the period of validity of driving licences
• intervals between medical examinations
• granting of provisional licences
• mutual recognition of the disqualification of licences.

Bureaucrats at the EU are now working on further harmonisation plans including the above. One of the changes necessary will be the obligatory renewal of licences every ten years (not another test, just a new licence). A microchip on the licences is also being looked at to store driver details.

One measure that could affect the legions of British Motorists that head over to the continent each year relates to disqualification. They want to end the situation where a driver can be banned abroad but continue to drive in their home country.

Link : http://europa.eu.int/comm/transport/home/drivinglicence/index_en.htm

[plucas1]

article said:

One of the changes necessary will be the obligatory renewal of licences every ten years (not another test, just a new licence)

What is the the point in that then? apart from to extort £20 out of everyone on a regular basis.

Why not force a proper re-test every 10 years?

[mcflurry]

plucas1 said:

Why not force a proper re-test every 10 years?

...because 90% of people would fail a retest


>> Edited by mcflurry on Friday 7th November 12:27

[XM5ER]

The next thing will be a passive RF component to the chipped licenses which will identify drivers as they pass scameras.Its easy to do.

[zippy3x]

RF ID technology is nowhere near capable of doing anything like that - power emmision regulations in this country limit reading of passive tags to about 10 feet, with read accuracy dropping off significantly after that - also trying to read tags through metal severely limits the range of the tag.

In short not going to happen any time soon...