This was originally posted in a French forum but it occurs to me that it may be of interest to some of you on here.
On a recent extensive trip around England I was stopped at 4 in the morning on a dual carriageway in Cornwall.
I saw the police car on the bridge but did not slacken my 110 km/hr on the cruise control as I thought I had nothing to hide. When he came to my driving window (yes, he had seen the plate and knew to come to the left) he said he had ‘clocked’ me at 80 mph. I was so shocked by this obvious mistake that I couldn’t for the life of me correct him except to say that I was doing 110 km/hr.
He then proved he had made a mistake by saying that I was breaking the 60 mph limit for light trailers, rather than the 70 for everything. A mixture perhaps of my entirely genuine innocence of the law and his realisation of his error caused him to say very quickly that he was not going to ‘do’ me, just give a friendly warning.
We then got on to the presentation of documents, carte gris, insurance and driving licence. He studied the latter very carefully and then, after checking on the radio, declared that it had expired. My reply, of course, was that French licences don’t expire. He spotted the 70 code which he thought meant that it did at my age, but was convinced by my (erroneous) explanation that that was just the HGV portion.
However, worse was to come. His radio call had prompted a visit to the DVLA database which stated that I was the holder (or rather ex-holder) of a UK licence which had expired when I didn’t renew it at age 70. I said that it didn’t expire because it had been exchanged for a French licence more than 15 years ago. They weren’t convinced and called a 2nd car containing a colleague ‘more expert’ in these matters. He alleged that because I hadn’t renewed my UK licence I was driving without one. I am not, I said, because I have a licence, and you are holding it. Ah, he said, but you are in England now and a UK licence takes precedence over a foreign one, you should have applied for a UK one. Aghast, I pointed out that if that was so then all the British residents in France would have to do so whenever they came to England. Which would be impossible from a logistical point of view because they would then have to re-apply for a French one on return home, but would also be illegal - holding 2 licences and, presumably, giving a false address in England to do so.
He pondered this for a while, not persuaded but not sure of his ground and, in the event allowed me to go on my way without further action.
Once back here I emailed Swansea and received a very quick reply. Apparently the French authorities did not send back my UK licence, as they are supposed to do, so my UK licence was never cancelled. They have now made a note against my record to correct the situation.
But I wonder how many other people this has happened to, without their knowledge, leaving them open to a similar misinterpretation by perhaps less sympathetic policemen. The ones I met could have taken me off the road for several hours while awaiting the offices at Swansea to open, but thankfully, didn’t.
