UK driving licences......beware!!

[billyfridge]

I recieved this Email today

Subject: Your Driving License - Beware

 

Please pass on to all friends/colleagues

Unwitting motorists face £1,000 fines as thousands of photo card driving licences expire.

Thousands of motorists are at risk of being fined up to £1,000 because they are unwittingly driving without a valid licence.


They risk prosecution after failing to spot the extremely small print on their photo card licence which says it automatically expires after 10 years and has to be renewed - even though drivers are licensed to drive until the age of 70.

The fiasco has come to light a decade after the first batch of photo licences was issued in July 1998, just as the they start to expire.

Motoring organisations blamed the Government for the fiasco and said 'most' drivers believed their licences were for life.

A mock-up driving licence from 1998 when the photo cards were launched shows the imminent expiry date as item '4b'

They said officials had failed to publicise sufficiently the fact that new-style licences - unlike the old paper ones - expire after a set period and have to be renewed.

To rub salt into wounds, drivers will have to a pay £17.50 to renew their card - a charge which critics have condemned as a 'stealth tax' and which will earn the Treasury an estimated £437million over 25 years.

Official DVLA figures reveal that while 16,136 expired this summer, so far only 11,566 drivers have renewed, leaving 4,570 outstanding.

With another 300,000 photo card licences due to expire over the coming year, experts fear the number of invalid licences will soar, putting thousands more drivers in breach of the law and at risk of a fine.

At the heart of the confusion is the small print on the tiny
credit-card-size photo licence, which is used in conjunction with the paper version.


Just below the driver name on the front of the photo card licence is a series of dates and details - each one numbered.

Number 4b features a date in tiny writing, but no explicit
explanation as to what it means.

The date's significance is only explained if the driver turns over the card and reads the key on the back which states that '4b' means 'licence valid to'.

Even more confusingly, an adjacent table on the rear of the card sets out how long the driver is registered to hold a licence - that is until his or her 70th birthday.

A total of 25million new-style licences have been issued but - motoring experts say - drivers were never sufficiently warned they would expire after 10 years.

Motorists who fail to renew their licences in time are allowed to continue driving. But the DVLA says they could be charged with 'failing to surrender their licence', an offence carrying a £1,000 fine.

AA president, Edmund King said: 'It is not generally known that photo card licences expire: there appears to be a lack of information that people will have to renew these licences.

'People think they have already paid them for once over and that is it.

'It will come as a surprise to motorists and a shock that they have to pay an extra £17.50.'

The AA called on the Government to use the annual £450million from traffic enforcement fines to offset the renewal charge.

 

because i'm an old fart, my driving licence is an old paper one, so it doesn't apply to mine

please note...this is NOT a joke, or a scam!!

[TheNightWatchman]

here in Aus, we have to pay around $100 to renew our licences every 5 years.

I looked into changing my Aus licence into UK one when i get there, that's going to cost me 50 pounds... plus they want me to send my old licence away with my application form - I think not?

So if you go into a registered post office... they charge you another 4 quid for doing that... 

[billyfridge]

here in Aus, we have to pay around $100 to renew our licences every 5 years.

I looked into changing my Aus licence into UK one when i get there, that's going to cost me 50 pounds... plus they want me to send my old licence away with my application form - I think not?

So if you go into a registered post office... they charge you another 4 quid for doing that... 

would you rather take the UK test Banana??

[Synbios]

Licenses expire every 5 years here in Massachusetts, and it's 20 bucks to renew. However every state has their own laws in the US.

[TheNightWatchman]

would you rather take the UK test Banana??

Haha... I hope I don't need to take another driving test until I'm 70.

Anyway, it wasn't the 50quid that I thought was silly... it was the extra 3 pounds to get in done in person... keeping my own ID with me..? I mean if they lost it in the post, they'll be some clause somewhere to say it wasn't their fault and not their problem.

In any case, 17.50 doesn't seem to bad for a 10 year renewal to me.

[billyfridge]

I checked up on that Banana, it seems that we don't have to take a test at 70, we just have to sign a form saying that we're not blind, deaf, crippled etc, cos my license runs out in 2011.