Is your driving licence valid?

This is all because a new law was introduced in January 2008 which changed the obligatory age for renewing licences, and rendered the date given on current documents obsolete! The problem is that publication of said law passed unnoticed (as do hundreds and hundreds of our laws) by the common citizen – who in the end, will be the one that suffers.

So, let’s explain it all better. Under the new law, anyone who turned 50 or 60 after 2008 had to renew their driving licence BEFORE their respective birthdays. (Before the law came into effect, licence renewals were only required at the age of 65.)

But now Portuguese and foreign resident drivers have to renew licences at 50, 60, 65 and 70 years old, and from then on, at two-yearly intervals. Anyone who doesn’t is no longer licensed to drive. Ignorance of the law, as you’d expect, cuts no ice with the authorities. So, what might happen when people are “caught out” at a police stop with their “expired” licences?

There are two possible scenarios. If a licence expired up to two years or less ago, people are committing a crime and as such can be fined anything from €120 to €600. There is a two-year leeway on expiry – after which the licence is assumed “never to have existed”.

If someone is thus caught out, they will be arrested and charged and could face as much as two years in prison or a fine equivalent to 240 days! In both cases, to be licenced to drive once again, they will have to take a special new driving test.

But imagine that one has an accident while driving unlicensed.

The insurance company can refuse to pay any damages and, if the accident is a serious one, there could be endless problems with the Portuguese justice system – probably the last thing most people want. If you have any doubts over the validity of your licence, you should contact the “Instituto da Mobilidade e dos Transportes Terrestres (IMTT)”, which emits and renews licences. Their telephone number is: 808 50 20 20 (from 9am to 7.30pm).

Of course, there should have been some sort of pre-publicity of this new law, in order to save citizens from finding themselves on the wrong side of it. It’s also incomprehensible that a confusion like this could arise in a country where mobility is almost completely dependent on the motorcar.

But then, a lot of us have stopped trying to understand anything that goes on here…