In Ireland, you just present your licence at the AA (Automobile Association) and they give you an international licence. Of course, international licences aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.
Manwithaplan, I understand your point (I think), which is that the International Driving Document doesn’t have anything to do with being a competent driver. Nevertheless, most countries do accept it, and it’s backed by a UN treaty.
I sometimes wish I could learn to drive a stick, but everyone I know has an automatic transmission. All my family, all my friends, have automatic transmissions. I haven’t even been a passenger in a car with a stick in ten years.
The company I drive for switched to buying trucks with automatic transmissions in 2000, except for some new International Eagles it got at a really good price. We retire the trucks at 500,000 miles which works out to about 3.5 to 4 years. We’ve still got some 99’s on the road now but fewer and fewer. By years end, except for the assorted hanger queen, we’ll have a completely automatic fleet.
Frankly, I prefer an automatic, but I’m glad I got 6 months experience driving the manual 10 speed.