DVLA red tape leaves Life On Cars at the mercy of the French police
IS IT possible to break the law in order to avoid
not breaking it?
That’s the rather
perplexing scenario I’ve spent the past week pondering, after it transpired
that in order to not flout this country’s laws I run the risk of simultaneously
falling foul of another’s.
All this thanks to the
DVLA, some red tape, a J-registered Saab and the Belgians.
It all started a week or so
ago when the state agency responsible for driving licences sent me a polite
letter to remind me that the photo on mine was looking a little out of date,
having been taken in a branch of Woolworths at a time when Britain’s two main
talking points were the Iraq War and The Cheeky Girls.
For the sake of £20, a new
and equally embarrassing photo and filling out a form, I’d avoid getting a
£1,000 fine. There was only one snag; it was a legal requirement to send off
both parts of my driving licence with it.
It’s an inconvenience, but
the not the end of the world. Or at least it wasn’t until two days after
posting the form off, when I got asked, for a business trip, to go to Belgium.
A business trip which is
not only in the very near future but will involve co-driving a friend’s Saab
9000 across France on the long trip to Antwerp. Places which, should I get
stopped by les Gendarmes, I’ll almost certainly get asked to produce the
driving licence I no longer possess.
It’s an absurd state of
affairs. In order to avoid breaking the laws of this country, I’ve been forced
into a position where I’ll have to break the laws of at least one other country
should I dare to do what I’m legally entitled to on the other side of the
Channel.
A quick call to the DVLA
didn’t help. Partly because it wasn’t an especially quick call and led me to
believe that humankind has actually abandoned Swansea and left the agency’s
phone-manning robots to fend for themselves, but because once I actually got
past the computerized phone switchboard it turned out the poor girl at the
other end of the line didn’t actually know how to help me.
Having explained that “Have
you asked the authorities in France and Belgium?” wasn’t the answer I was
looking for, she was happy to sell me a Certificate of Entitlement, which for a
fiver will prove to the police you really are entitled to drive. Unfortunately,
it also comes with a whopping great disclaimer which states it isn’t valid in
other EU states.
It is ridiculous that, in
the event of the DVLA requiring your licence back at renewal time, it has
absolutely no procedure in place should you need to pop over to the continent.
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