I have never been ask to show them the paper part at a road side check,and can not remember when they want to see the photo id card either.The paper part is cheaply made,and not fit for purpose,you can not laminate it,as that is a fine.
toby1234abc:
I have never been ask to show them the paper part at a road side check,and can not remember when they want to see the photo id card either.The paper part is cheaply made,and not fit for purpose,you can not laminate it,as that is a fine.
And by 2015 it will be a thing of the past in the UK
The paper counterpart has no reason to be shown in Europe to anyone, it only contains information applicable to the UK and Ireland. The plastic card has everything else required.
Full Name
Address
Class of entitlement
Medical Notes
Issuer
Date of Birth
Signature
Photograph
Whenever the French or German authorities ask to see my licenece they look at it with dismay and confusion.
I really must sort out a Belgian licenece when I go back to work. 
youre lucky you dont live in Wales same size licence, but english and welsh langauge to fit on
Hardly anybody in Wales understands Welsh anyway, as this road sign below demonstrates.
The bit at the bottom reads “I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated’”. 
KW:
Whenever the French or German authorities ask to see my licenece they look at it with dismay and confusion.
There is a very simple reason for it: it’s the letters UK on it.
All other countries have their international codes on it, so Austria has A, not Ö, Poland has PL, not RP (from Rzeczpospolita Polska, Republic of Poland), Czech Republic has CZ, not ÄŒR, Spain has E etc etc. It seems that it’s only UK, which has UK on it, not GB. (My guess it’s because GB does not includes NI, am I right?)
So when foreign cops see your license and there is some country code they don’t know, they often get confused. My mates who have British licenses were asked in Poland and in Czech Republic if its Ukrainian. And you know, if you have Ukrainian license it is as you wrote on your forehead “I bought my license from this shaddy guy on a fruit market” 
orys:
My mates who have British licenses were asked in Poland and in Czech Republic if its Ukrainian. And you know, if you have Ukrainian license it is as you wrote on your forehead “I bought my license from this shaddy guy on a fruit market”
I was under the impression that was how most of the Eastern Europeans acquired their driving licence, and the standard of driving would in my opinion back this up.
GBPub:
orys:
My mates who have British licenses were asked in Poland and in Czech Republic if its Ukrainian. And you know, if you have Ukrainian license it is as you wrote on your forehead “I bought my license from this shaddy guy on a fruit market”I was under the impression that was how most of the Eastern Europeans acquired their driving licence, and the standard of driving would in my opinion back this up.
Yeah, you are boring, you know? We had it here before several times.
Actualy in Eastern Europe (thanks to it being part of Austro-Hungarian Empire propably) the requirements for Driving Licenses date much earlier than in UK:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=72763&p=933860#p933860 (example of my country)
Therefore we always used to be ahead of you when it comes to drivers training and requirement for examinations, and I dare to tell it is much harder to gain your license in Poland than it is in UK:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=72763&p=933860#p933860
and I also know that from my own experience, as I did a driving course for buses in Scotland (but had to drop it due to lack of money and I no longer need the D license).
And last but not least: if you think British drivers are better than other nation’s drivers, I am very sorry to dissappoint you: you are not any better, or any worse than any other nation, driving skills are not related to nationality and you can find good and bad drivers in any nation.
Spare me examples of poor Eastern European driving you saw, I can provide you with at least the same number of examples of poor British driver (or even propably more, since I live in this country 6th year now) and thaty proves nothing.
As for Ukrainian licenses: there was a scam like this few years ago, AFAIK all involved were arested and their licenses revoked. So you can sleep peacefully.
Ah, and even if you have your license from Ukraina, driving in Poland is such a school of life, than after that UK looks like a kidnergarten
Merry Christmas
Orys so it is ok for you to have a go at the Ukraine, but I am not allowed to criticise anyone. You are the one who said the following!!!
orys:
if you have Ukrainian license it is as you wrote on your forehead “I bought my license from this shaddy guy on a fruit market”
Orys I really am not interested in either your history lessons or you trying to justify how much harder it is supposed to be to obtain a licence. I stand by my statement that the quality of driving by many Eastern Europeans is appalling. Apart from many of them being extremely dangerous drivers, you want to watch them trying to reverse on to a loading bay.
orys:
Therefore we always used to be ahead of you when it comes to drivers training and requirement for examinations, and I dare to tell it is much harder to gain your license in Poland than it is in UK:
Yes, but the difference is, that one Pole passes the test, and then ten of them drive with different agencies with the same licence.
GBPub:
Orys so it is ok for you to have a go at the Ukraine, but I am not allowed to criticise anyone. You are the one who said the following!!!orys:
if you have Ukrainian license it is as you wrote on your forehead “I bought my license from this shaddy guy on a fruit market”Orys I really am not interested in either your history lessons or you trying to justify how much harder it is supposed to be to obtain a licence. I stand by my statement that the quality of driving by many Eastern Europeans is appalling. Apart from many of them being extremely dangerous drivers, you want to watch them trying to reverse on to a loading bay.
you have to admit orys he’s got you there 
if you can criticize people from eastern europe over dodgy licences so can we, if not we’d be living in a controlled communist state rather than a free democratic world and i don’t think you’d want to go back there would you
welshboyinspain:
you have to admit orys he’s got you there
No, I don’t. First: I am not criticizing ukrainians, nor give any sweeping statements about any nation. Unlike his anti-eastern european rant, the case with dodgy licenses from Ukraine was genuine.
The scam was working on the basis that to do a driving course in some country you have to live there for at least 6 months. The organizers of the scam was making false records showing that the client was living in Ukraine to pass that requirements, then bribing the examiners to that their customers were passing their exams (or, in some cases, they even did not wanted to go to Ukraine at all). In that way they were obtaining genuine Ukrainian driving license which then was exchanged to their Polish license.
This is a press article describing one of these situations: krakow.gazeta.pl/krakow/1,35798, … rainy.html but there was more of them.
After some of these scams were exposed, the Polish police started to cooperate with Ukrainians and were checking all driving licenses from Ukraine against the records of their holders passing the Ukrainian border and that way most of these people were caught and brought to justice.
So as you can see unlike him, who just have sentence of “Eastern Europeans can’t drive” made up by himself, I never told that Ukrainians cannot drive. I just told that because of this scam being quite popular few years ago (AFAIK several hundreds of people had their licenses that way), and that the scam was not only a Polish speciality, the Eastern European police have genuine reason to be suspicious about the licenses from Ukraine.
And I think nobody here disagree with me if I tell you that level of corruption on Ukraine is much higher than it is in Poland or in UK. So this is the reason why to get pass by paying a bribe Poles were going to Ukraine, not staying in their own country or going to UK.
GBPub:
Orys I really am not interested in either your history lessons or you trying to justify how much harder it is supposed to be to obtain a licence. I stand by my statement that the quality of driving by many Eastern Europeans is appalling. Apart from many of them being extremely dangerous drivers, you want to watch them trying to reverse on to a loading bay.
In other words: you are not interested in facts, you have your opinion and you will stick to that. And the fact that this was discussed here 1000s of times, and that you can easily find a BRITISH driver who is dangerous, who cannot reverse etc wont’ change it later. So I guess further discussion is futile, as long as you think that being a good or bad driver depends of one’s nationality.
(saying that there are some differences. I from my own experience (and I dare to tell, that since I was a driver in Poland for 8 years and now in UK for 6 I have a good material to compare) there are some differences. In my view very often statements below are true:
- Polish drivers have less respect to the highway code
- British drivers have less knowledge of the highway code
- Polish drivers tend to speeding more
- British drivers tend to be annoyingly slow and often they look as they are lost on the road
- Polish drivers have better technical skills due to the conditions they have to drive (harsh winters, poor roads, enourmous traffic)
- British drivers are much more polite to other road users
etc.
If you want to judge the whole lot of the Polish drivers on the basis of the few examples you witnessed of ones who cannot reverse, you have to take into consideration that while less and less young people in UK is going to driving, the situation in Eastern Europe is opposite. So the average age of Polish trucker is much lower, so it is much more likely that you will meet someone unexperienced. Especially that in UK unexpernienced ones struggle to find ANY job, while in Poland is nothing unusual that fresh driver goes to international haulage.
So please note: I am not defending Polish poor drivers - there are many of them, as there are many of poor British drivers. I just provided you with the facts in hope that you wont make another stupid statements by brushing everyone with the same brush.
And to finish it, I give you an anegdote. When I come here and started work as an agency driver, I was driving for well known frozen food distributor. On one occasion I had an assesor with me - an experienced driver who was send out with new drivers to check them. We arrived at the hotel, he jumped off the truck and told me “reverse up this ramp as much as you can, and I will let them know to open the kitchen doors”. So I did as he told me. When I jumped out the cab, I heard a loug band: there was a kitchen porter coming out through the kitchen doors and he was scared to see the lorry. He said “noone never reversed so high up the ramp, the delivery trucks usually just stick half the way up the ramp, as they cannot make it over that bend”. Soon there was a small gathering of hotel workers, and the manager told me that when they took over the hotel, there was a container sitting in the yard, and they ordered the container company to lift it up, but they told them it is impossible to get the lorry up there. So the container has to stay and there was always a mystery for them to know how on earth the container get there in a first place". He told me that now, when he saw with his own eyes that it is actually possible to reverse the truck up there, he is about to call the container company and ask them to take the container away.
It was in 2006 and as you can see on this google picture g.co/maps/uzj8a , the container was there still in summer 2009 (and I believe it is still there today). So, should I make a sweeping statement saying that Britons cannot reverse a rigid? 
I am not willing to, for me is enough to say that to reverse a rigid there was very tricky (been there, done that ) and therefore many drivers are not willing to take the risk, especially that it is very narrow and there are bends on both sides.
I would be grateful if you would also stick to the facts and just stop making general statements, because you seen a few drivers who cannot reverse. (btw: another thing is that if you see someone who can’t reverse, you take a notice of this, and you can then tell one’s nationality, while you are not interested if someone does his job properly and you are not interested in his nationality, so you cannot even tell how high percentage of Eastern European drivers you saw can reverse and how many cannot).
orys:
brushing everyone with the same brush.
“Tarring everyone with the same brush”, is the phrase you’re looking for.
Simon:
orys:
brushing everyone with the same brush.“Tarring everyone with the same brush”, is the phrase you’re looking for.
Thank you
Orys, you also have to bear in mind that western Europeans do not stop in the outside lane of a motorway if they have a puncture.
Harry Monk:
Orys, you also have to bear in mind that western Europeans do not stop in the outside lane of a motorway if they have a puncture.
I saw such thing only once in my life. It was on M8 in Glasgow and she was Scottish (I heard her talking on the phone when passing here slowly in the traffic jam)
The other thing is that in UK often when the car breaks down, they just live it where it is and call the recovery, while in Eastern Europe they will try to push it off the road (often with help of other drivers).
I often stop and ask such people if they need help to push the car off the road, but they usually answer “no, thank you, the recovery is on its way”
I guess it is one of these cultural differences
orys:
If you want to judge the whole lot of the Polish drivers on the basis of the few examples you witnessed of ones who cannot reverse
Who mentioned Polish drivers? Certainly not me, I actually said Eastern European. I stand by my comments that the standard of driving by the vast majority of Eastern Europeans is appalling.
Orys as you are always so quick the defend the Polish etc. If you are so proud of your country, can I ask why you choose to live here in the UK instead of back in Poland?
orys, if you answered in shorter posts more people would actually read them, if I wanted to read 30,000 word dissitations I’d be a teacher
welshboyinspain:
orys, if you answered in shorter posts more people would actually read them, if I wanted to read 30,000 word dissitations I’d be a teacher
Thats just what as I was thinking as I started to read his reply to you…shortly before giving up