kadkaf

Hi. I'm an American married to a Brit. We've been living in the UK for about six years, and before that we lived in the US together for a long time. We're about to spend a six month sabbatical in Berkeley, CA. We both have UK driving licences but we've unfortunately let our US licences expire. How long can we drive in California before we need to have a CA licence? We hope to either rent a car there or possibly buy one and sell it after the six months. (And that's a whole different set of questions...)

Any help with this would greatly appreciated. It never occurred to me that I'd need any information going back that way, but I find I'm in the dark about a lot of things!

Weeze

http://www.caldrive.com/law.html

This might help you. Welcome to BE.

md95065

The web site that you really want is this one - http://www.dmv.ca.gov/dl/dl_info.htm#two500

The question that you have to answer is whether or not being on a 6 month sabbatical with a definite end date would allow you to consider yourself a "visitor" as far as the California DMV is concerned. Not an easy question to answer - I could go either way on it but, you would probably be OK.

Anyway, as I am sure that you know from past experience, the driver's license is the de facto universal form of ID in the US so both you and your spouse might want to get one anyway while you are here just for the sake of convenience. California will require "proof of lawful presence" for your spouse if they are not a US citizen - in which case, what visa will they have?

kadkaf

Thanks for both of those links! I'll have a good look at both. I'd rather not go through the whole DMV process if I can avoid it, although I see your point, md95065, about its usefulness as the main piece of i.d. My husband has U.S. citizenship, so we don't have to worry about that part.

One thing that concerns me is insurance. I wonder whether we'll be able to get car insurance without U.S. licences. I was able to get car insurance with my US driving licence when we first moved to the UK (I had a year before I had to get a UK licence), but my husband seems to remember that, when he first moved to the US in 1983, he wasn't allowed car insurance until he had his US licence. Does anyone know if that still holds?

By the way, my mother lives in Santa Cruz!

md95065

You can get insurance without having a US driver's license - there are several people here who have done that and if you search you should be able to find some threads dealing with that and possibly recommending particular companies.

I do wonder, however, whether registering a vehicle in California might tip the balance towards you being considered a "resident" as far as the DMV is concerned and thus, strictly speaking, needing to get a CA driver's license - I don't know - and, of course, neither will anyone at the DMV ...

Depending on where you are going to be in Berkeley and what you will be doing you might be able to get away with just renting a car on weekends ...

Or you might want to try something like Zipcars (don't know if you would need a US license for that)

Edited to add:

Looks like you can do it with a UK license - http://www.zipcar.com/apply/foreign-...id=1062&#p1062

kadkaf

Zipcars looks like a worthwhile option. Thanks for the tip!

Where we live in England, driving is a nuisance and walking is a pleasure, so we use our car very little. I hope to walk as much possible in Berkeley, but I'll be visiting my mother in Santa Cruz at least once a week and we'll do our fair share of touring around the state. Zipcars would make more sense I think than renting.