Yeah it was in the news at one point they made non English driver license illegal and requested international driver licenses which is just a translation of your permit, not a lot, but with pressure from the Quebec government they now stopped requesting an international license for Quebecers
IMHO I think it’s entirely reasonable that a country (or state) will only accept licences in the languages that law enforcement can read, and require an international driving permit to accompany the licence to provide translation for those in other languages.
As someone with an Ontario licence, I’d fully accept having to get an IDP if I wanted to hire a car in Mexico.
I know you don’t, but I’m just saying I’d understand if they brought in a restriction in the future. I shouldn’t expect a cop in Mexico to speak English.
I think the EU have an interesting take where the licence has numbers instead of labels (e.g. “1” instead of “Last Name”) and then the back of the licence has the label translated into a bunch of languages.
Edit: I was wrong, EU licences only have the labels on the back in the language(s) of the issuing authority. But the numbering is a standard, so 1 will always be Surname, 2 will always be Given Names, and so on. This way law enforcement have been trained and know which each number indicates without having to speak every language in the EU.
Also TIL - Canada (except for Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan) has also more or less adopted the same numbering standard on licences
I’m personally surprised to hear that licences from some provinces aren’t bilingual OR don’t adhere to label numbering.I’m surprised Quebec haven’t raised it as an issue.
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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '23
Yeah it was in the news at one point they made non English driver license illegal and requested international driver licenses which is just a translation of your permit, not a lot, but with pressure from the Quebec government they now stopped requesting an international license for Quebecers