burnleyfc1925

Hello can you help with my driving licence problem!
I am living in Portugal most of the time but I still have a UK address, I have a UK driving licence which allows me to drive my UK registered motorhome up to 7500 tonnes, I have just bought a Portuguese car I have been told because I have resident status i must apply for a Portuguese driving licence, the problem is that the Portuguese licence i have been informed will only allow me to drive vehicles up to 3500 tonnes my motorhome is 4500 tonnes, i was just about to change my licence and matriculate the motorhome to Portuguese plates, can anybody advise me what to do?

Regards
Ian

BillBullock

7500 tonnes is a hell of a weight to put on Portuguese roads!

philat98

The M1 Abrams battle tank only weighs 61 tons.

burnleyfc1925

To be fair my mistake my motorhome weighs 4500kg gross

Red Eric

I'll do a bit of thinking aloud here while you await a person with some practical experience or sound knowledge turning up - mostly pure speculation, so please treat it as such.

Not sure there's a way out of that one without you having to sit a test somewhere.

If you're resident in Portugal, you're going to have to exchange your licence fairly soon because of Brexit, leaving aside the fact that it should already have at least been registered with IMT within 60 days of your becoming resident.

The probability is that on exchange, you'll lose any categories outside the current standard unless you can prove you sat a practical test for them. Don't know whether that's an absolute raging certainty but I do know that it's a commonly-reported problem.

Assuming the idea of sitting a test in Portugal fills you with dread, I don't know whether you could perhaps pre-empt that to some extent by sitting a test in the UK for the appropriate category. For that to be possible I guess you and the DVLA would both have to assume that you're currently resident in the UK for this purpose and even then it would depend on how they'd view a request from you to sit a test for a category you're already licensed for.

liveaboard

Go to local driving school and ask them to help.
Driving schools are a bit more than driving schools; they're the civilian experts in road law and formalities. They can make applications for you and give advice on this sort of thing.
You might need to sit a test, and/or take a practical test.
I recently did that for my agriculture tractor licence. A hassle, but now it's done.

Midgo

I exchanged my UK license for a PT one to avoid the huge cost and hassle of taking a PT test following UK advice should we leave without a deal
See this thread
Effectively I lost my heavier vehicle group due to lack of exact equivalence
A pain, but better than taking a PT test
since then there has obviously been a lot of shenanigans on the Brexit front so not sure what current or future situations will be

But I do remember reading that if I do need to get my UK card back at any time I will get my original groups back on it

However, what I do know for certain is that if you have residency here neither you (nor, I think, your spouse etc) can drive a UK registered vehicle here - you have to re-register it here in PT - UK address or not
I have gotten away with it (and worse) in the previous decades when Portugal was far less German in applying the rules but finally came round to the 'if you knock down a little kid, your insurance wont be valid' point of view
It's not daft - a great way to keep their closed highly artificially over-inflated vehicle market going here in PT - so much for free economic zones (they are not import duties, they are bureaucratic costs)
Having said that it works the same way in the UK - my PT friend lives in UK and was stopped getting of the ferry in UK and told he couldn't drive in UK in his PT car - he had to get a mate to drive miles to go pick him up!
World gone mad!

Good luck!

Abr.

Lreigh

Rambling archer

I believe that at the moment you can register and continue to use your UK licence. You register it in the nearest IMT office and they take note of it and give you a paper to show that this is so, which you have to carry round with your licence in the vehicle you are driving. Unfortunately after Brexit finally happens there is a need to exchange the UK licence for a Portuguese one. Currently you have two years grace to do it, but in the near future all will have to be exchanged - however this might give you some breathing space to get yourself sorted out?

vertigobike

hi

I also don't know the exact law that goes into that, but like someone above mentioned, a good suggestion would be for you to go to a Driving School (Escola de Condução) to get "high on information" :-)

the only thing is that if the Driving School is not honest they might "sell" you some driving lessons (theory or practice) as part of their "help"... it's like going to get your eyes tested in an Optician and having the naĩve idea you're going to leave the store without a pair of glasses... because that's their bread & butter right there i.e. to sell glasses... so even if you don't need ones they'll recommed you a pair of "resting" glasses :-)

what I do know is that the "heavier" category in Portugal is the so-called "truck license" (category C)... and for that you not only need to have the car license (category A) first, but you also have to do medical and psychometric tests every 5 years upon the mandatory Driver's License revalidation (every 2 years if you're over 70)

nevertheless I personally think all of this Driver's License exchange process a ton of BS... we should already be in a Confederated European Union with unique/common central bodies that replace each state's own bodies... like for Transports, Laws, Taxes, Social Security, etc... USA-like... if that was the case, there would be no real bureaucracies into going from one state to another intra-EU; and you would no longer need to exchange legal documents, apply for residency, register to local authorities, etc.... time for United States of Europe! :-)

regards

mikelincs

The problem with that is that the OK has already decided to bin all that, and with them wanting the change the WA, they there is still no real idea as to what will happen. There is a ton of s**t about to descend on Brits living in the EU who have not regsirered, and that is a lot of them.

wellinever

But don`t we have until at least 30th June 2021 to apply for temp 5 year residency, not 30th December 2020 and under the same terms as today?
At least this is what I read on the UK GOV living in Europe?

mikelincs

Given the way the UK government is messing about with everything, then who the hell knows. They are currently turning the 'Garden of England' Kent, into the 'Car Park of England' also known as 'Farage's Garage' for all the lorries they are expecting, So given all this I don't think anyone can say, with any certainty, what will happen.

Pulaski

You realise, or perhaps not, that in the USA, drivers licenses [sic] are all managed at the level of individual states, i.e. there is no such thing as an "American drivers license", and if you move between states you have to exchange your license. The road test you only take once when you firsdt learn to drive*, but the degree of addtional "classroom eduction" and computer-based testing varies considerably (in New York the state mandates 5 hours of classroom education for new drivers!*), and when you move to another state although you don't have to retake the road test, you typically have to take some sort of basic road signs test on a computer.

* Almost all US states do not recognise a UK driving licence (I only know of one that does), and so a road test is required for anyone from the UK moving to the US, and the test is, even in the :tough" states, an utter joke. So long as you don't actually cause an accident or run over a pedestrian, that seems to be good enough to be passed for a license. Oh, and you must stop at a STOP sign - Americans have a weird obession with STOP signs, which are as common as Give Way signs in the UK. Conversely Yield (Give Way) signs in the US are as rare as STOP signs in the UK.

Woodstore

Side question. Having recently taken residency due to staying in Portugal more than 3 months, I certainly don't want to exchange my licence for a PT one but take the other option of notifying the IMT. Is this really an option or is it mandatory to switch ones driving licence? If not when is it mandatory? As is the case surely if one permanently moves to Portugal which is certainly not what we intend to do but rather spend more time in PT when Covid allows... Thanks

Red Eric

If you are a visitor to Portugal, you don't have to either register or exchange your licence.

If you reside in Portugal and are an EU citizen, you may register your licence with the IMT and continue driving on it until its expiry date, at which time you must exchange it for a PT licence. You can, optionally, exchange for a PT licence as opposed to registering it. Either way, that must be done within 60 days of fixing residence in Portugal.

Come the end of the Brexit transition period, registering a UK licence will no longer be an option for UK citizens resident in Portugal, and all previously registered licences will have to be exchanged if they haven't already been.