Drivers License

[LlamaBean]

Does anybody know when a drivers license was first required to drive? Surely they were not required off the bat for those newfangled “automobile” thingamabobs. When was it that someone noticed that there were too many 10 year olds cruising around?

-Ashley

[Liberal]

There’s a hodgepodge of sources on this, none really definitive, but you can get a good idea of the time frame.

According to (then Governor) Bill Clinton, West Virginia issued the first driver’s license. In a speech at East Los Angeles College in May, 1992, the Governer said:

In my state we do something that might not work in a big city but it works in a rural state. You drop out of school for no good reason, you lose your driver’s license. More than 1,750 young people have lost their driver’s license since we passed the law, but our state now has the highest graduation rate in our region. The other state that’s about tied with us is West Virginia, another poor state that was the first state to adopt the driver’s license law.

Unfortunately, Clinton doesn’t say when that happened, and the West Virginia DOT site doesn’t corroborate it.

Ohio, Texas, and Idaho all issued their first driver’s licenses in 1935. The first driver’s license in Michigan went to Governor Albert E. Sleeper on July 1, 1919. Oregon issued its first anually renewable driver’s license in 1911. Automotive Facts says that the first license issued in Denver, Colorado was in 1906, and cites Mrs. John Howell Phillips of Chicago as the first licensed woman driver (just when isn’t clear).

But according to the Phoenix New Times:

[Local physician H. W. Fenner] had the road to himself for a couple of years. By 1905, when Fenner was issued the first driver’s license in the Arizona Territory, other moneyed Tucsonans had imported horseless carriages from eastern factories, and downtown windows soon rattled with traffic noise. “Old Doc” Fenner, who was all of forty, was happy to chug along at a snail’s pace, but younger drivers needed a place to push their roadsters to the limit, the daredevil speed of 15 miles per hour.

That’s still not the final word. Eagles Byte NYNY historical project reports that in May, 1900:

The first driver’s license in Genesee County is issued to Ray F. Otis.

One source records Carl Benz as the first person in the world to receive a driver’s license in Germany in 1888.

---

Additional sources:

History of the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles

Idaho’s Motor Vehicle History

Texas Republic

Oregon Department of Transportation

St. Clair County Library

Unicover

[lucwarm]

*Originally posted by Libertarian *
**

According to (then Governor) Bill Clinton, **

Ummm … ummm …

[Nametag]

Clinton didn’t say West Virginia was the first state to issue a driver’s license, he said it was the first to adopt “the driver’s license law”: the law he was talking about, the law that requires drivers under 18 to attend high school. They passed that law in 1988.

Completely off the track, Lib.

[mangeorge]

I seem to remember that New York was the first. Checking…
And Lib, you should know better than to mention ol’ Bill.
Peace,
mangeorge