Jibba

Now that we're finally in Vancouver, my husband and I have got the fun of the BC road test to contend with in order to get our BC driving licenses.

At the moment we don't own a car so we'd like to rent one for few days (using our UK licenses) and then take the road test in this. The problem is that when we spoke to a person at Avis, they said that their insurance policy is fine for the car rental period apart from the hour or so that you take the road test. They say this is because you have to surrender your UK license just before taking the road test (and you don't get it back until you pass) so that technically you're not licensed for the period of the test.

I can't seem to get a straight answer from anyone at ICBC or Autoplan but I have had a couple of suggestions (with no specific names) that there are some car rental companies out there that will cover us for a situation like this.

Has anyone else been in the same situation - and what did you do?

Atlantic Xpat

Surely simplest thing is to find a willing driving instructor who is prepared (for suitable financial inducement) to provide a vehicle for the test. You might I suppose have to pay for a couple of refresher lessons to make it worth their while.

dingbat

You cannot do this in BC, as learners cannot rent vehicles. Go to a local driving school and ask for a pre-test refresher and test booking. It will cost you about $150.

startwin

This is exactly what my friends did, I think it cost a little bit less than that, but it's worth it anyway. You get an hour's driving around and the instructor will tell you what you need to improve on, then off to the test. Good luck!

Jibba

Thanks for your info. What I need forget to mention is that we will both be trying for standby appointments as the waiting time is over two months, which means we would be over our 3 months grace period.

Cheers

SarahBC

Hi there,

We rented a car to do our BC driving test in.

It didn't even occur to us to mention this when we hired it - so it was no problem whatsoever.

We also went well over our 3 month period before we obtained our BC licenses (our area also has a long waiting time for tests).

So, I'll duck while I get a volley of abuse telling me not to break the rules. I'm not advocating doing what we did, but everything worked out fine for us.

All the best,

Sarah

bad.andy

When we came to Campbell River in October we were told that you didn't have to pass the test within the 90 days as long as you started the process by passing the theory test. We were also told that if we failed we could still use our UK licence until we passed. My test involved chatting to the examiner about the UK, what was different in Canada and rugby. It lasted a whole 20 minutes including the paperwork and briefing at the start.

bad.andy

Londonuck

We hired a car for the day. It was absolutely lashing rain when I took my test on the north shore an hour after my wife passed with the same instructor.