From The Smoking Gun. WTF? Was she in Arizona? I thought a driver’s license issued by any state was valid in all the other ones? Any ideas?
Without a story, it’s kinda hard to tell what happened. Best guess, it was expired.
They’re definitely valid nationwide. I was ticketed for speeding in Louisiana with an Arizona permit and I was fine.
Then again, that cop didn’t seem on his game. Didn’t ask to see the license of the person I was driving with (I only had a permit, remember) and he didn’t ask for proof of insurance, either.
Arizona will accept your valid license from all 50 states as legal to drive in that state. What Arizona will not do is accept your valid license as proof of citizenship or residency to remain in the USA.
Perhaps the problem was that she had moved to a different state but hadn’t gotten a license from the new state. Generally, you’re supposed to do this with a few weeks of changing your state of residence.
I don’t know about drivers licenses but generally you have to license your car in the state you live in. I know someone who had their car impounded because of this.
You only have have a limited time when you move to a different state get a valid drivers license. You also have a limited time to change stats like your address even if you live in the same state.
That’s true unless the car is principally garaged in another state.
For example NH snowbirds often have cars registered in FL and leave them there.
You get into trouble when the car is garaged in one state and registered in another.
Several years ago MA residents used to register cars in less expensive NH (some had summer homes there) and garage them in MA but MA caught on and started some major enforcement with big fines for the transgressors.
In general it is not possible to enforce licensing and registration laws on a car or driver that is licensed/registered out of state. For instance all 50 states do not require insurance.
Impossible to answer with no information.
Is it just me, or is she seriously good-looking?
They also accept licences from any Canadian province and, usually, other foreign ones too. I had a friend from Australia who went to the trouble of getting an International Driver’s Permit when spending a year at Tulane. He got stopped by a cop and showed the IDP. The cop had never seen it before and didn’t accept it. My friend pointed out that it was legal by a treaty signed and ratified by the US government. The cop replied that yes, he had heard of the US government but it had no jurisdiction in LA. Finally my friend showed him his Australian licence and the cop accepted that with no problem. Now had it been in German, I don’t know what would have happened. My Quebec licence is in French, but US cops must be trained to deal with that, although I have had to show it only once, in NJ, where it was accepted without comment. I even beat the ticket (which was a badly marked No Left Turn sign late at night and in the rain).
Since then, I have not bothered to get an IDP when traveling. The Swiss specify explicitly that any national driving licence will be accepted provided it is in Roman letters. How they would deal with, say, a Hungarian licence is a mystery to me, but I guess they could see the expiry date and some of the physical description. Maybe there is a standard format, but what are the words for blue and brown?
It’s just you.
Yeah, that doesn’t make sense to me, either. When we got a speeding ticket in Idaho {spits}, the Trooper looked at Jim’s Alberta driver’s license, wrote the ticket, and we went on our way. They left it up to us to pay the ticket, which we did promptly, because we need to be able to drive in the US for vacations.
Mind you, an Alberta driver’s license won’t get you beer in Wrigley Field. 
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An IDP is insufficient by itself without the accompanying driver’s license, which is probably why your cop was hassling your friend about it. The IDP is basically a multi-language translation of the data on an actual driver’s license.
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Hungarian is written with the Latin/Roman alphabet.
(legal information, not legal advice)
In the US, I believe interstate recognition of driver’s licenses and vehicle registrations are considered part of the “full faith and credit” that each US state is required to grant to others under the US Constitution.
It is pretty well known here that there is cross border recognition of US and Canadian driver’s licenses. My Virginia license was accepted without comment in Prince Edward Island and I was on my way rapidly.
The last time I checked the official Virginia driver’s handbook (published by the State DMV), it stated that Canadian, German, and I think one other country’s licenses were considered good enough that you could swap it for a Virginia license upon establishing legal Virginia residency without having to take a formal driving test on Virginia roads, while applicants from a license from somewhere like Russia would have to take the exam.
What is true is that you normally must have a license granted by the jurisdiction of your residence, so a California license is normally 100% good for touring or temporarily studying or working in Arizona, but as soon as you gain Arizona residence you must replace your license with an Arizona one.
Wasn’t Britney Spears arreted (or rather ticketed) for this? She has a Louisiana DL and claimed that that state was still her primary residence, so she didn’t need a California DL. But obviously CA disagreed with her and made her get a CA DL
I know a lot of out of state cases revolve around things like people getting DUIs or having their licenses suspended in one state and then the go to a new state and get a new driver’s license, (Claiming they never had one before). Most states can tap into each other’s databases, but not all states, and sometimes that doesn’t reveal the suspension if you do it quick enough after your DUI suspsension.
Hell, the other night, an Arizona driver’s license wouldn’t get me beer in Wichita, Kansas! To be fair, the server hadn’t ever seen an AZ license, and he got a bit minorly spooked by the 2049 expiration date (clerks in Arizona don’t like doing paperwork more often than absolutely necessary, it seems…).
Of course, the fact that my friends always have to make some retarded joke about “Make sure you show him the fake ID that says you’re legal!” probably didn’t help. Ended up using my military ID (which I HATE using for stuff like this) instead. Most nights at that establishment, I never have a problem using the AZ license though.
An international driver’s license is not a legal document. Rumor is quite right, it is basically a translation only.
According to New Jersey law you can drive using another country’s license as long as you have not taken permenant residency. That is defined by either living here for a year or getting a job.
On a somewhat related note: I had recently relocated NJ (a couple of years ago) and I was still driving with my BC (Canada) licence. I got pulled over and got nicked with an expensive speeding ticket. Because BC doesn’t share information with NJ about tickets, I didn’t get points on my BC license. I didn’t have a NJ license so I didn’t get points there either. It didn’t come up in any reports when I got a NJ dl + insurance.
I’ve been licensed to sell beer in Texas before and I think the “squeamishness” toward selling alcohol in even remotely iffy situations comes down to one fact: The clerk/server can’t be penalized for opting not to sell you alcohol but if they take a chance - however low risk that chance may be - and turn out to be wrong they can be jerked out of the store/bar and arrested right then and there.
The funny thing is, the training videos the Texas Alcohol & Beverage Commission make you watch to get certification pretty much spell out in bright neon letters that cops operating a sting are not allowed to send anyone in with a fake license, and the juvenile they send in is not allowed to lie if quizzed about their actual age… so really it’s hard to mess that up unless you just don’t card the kid at all. Yet time and again I would hear my fellow clerks assert such outright fictions as the “fact” that they could get arrested for failing to ID someone even if they turned out to actually be over 21! I used to get turned down for an expired license at one point, even though the watermark should have made it abundantly clear that the license was definitely issued by the TX DMV (besides, why would anyone make a fake ID that was already expired?)
Ok, so this is only marginally on topic, but the point I’m trying to make is that a lot of people called upon to uphold the law tend to over complicate it in the process of not fully understanding it - better to be too strict than too lenient if you’re trying to cover your ass - and as such there’s room for a wide variety of treatment by those entrusted with upholding the law, whether it’s cops or just lowly convenience store clerks.