Michigan Man

We will be moving back to the UK next year and I have a question about driving licenses. My wife and I still have our UK driving licenses, but my sons who are in their early 20's, learned to drive in the USA and have licenses there (on automatic cars). So my question - will they be able to use their US driving licenses for a period of time in the UK?
I know when we moved the the USA we were able to use our UK licenses for a few months before we took the ridiculously easy test.
How soon will they have to take a driving test?

Any advice from those going through the same issue is welcome

Dave_Was

I did some research on this a while back on the DVLA website as my wife will be in the same boat that she learned and passed her drivers test in the states.

You can drive on a US licence for 12months and you will need to pass the UK test before that time is up to have continuous driving priviledges. I think in the UK if you pass the test in a manual transmission car, you can drive either a manual or automatic. If you pass the test in an automatic transmission car you can only drive an automatic transmission car. My wife will probably just do the test in a automatic car.

The webpage is http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Motoring...nce/DG_4022561 here. Hope that link worked.

Good luck.


P.S. I found the same thing when passing my test in the US. However, my recollection is that it was really tough in the UK and apparently in the last 10 years it's become a lot tougher!

Scout

Yep, they can drive on their American Licenses for a year. I would recommend they take some driving lessons over here before they attempt to take the test. The written and the hazard perception is easy enough with a bit of studying and practice. The reason I took lessons was that everytime I asked a British driver a question about some rule of the road or another, I got a different answer. I think I took about 6 lessons and passed all the tests the first time around.