Driving without licence - WWYD

[Washingyourcurtains]

I've recently found out my father in law has never had a driving licence. He's in his 60s and has owned and driven cars all his adult life, just never took his test. I'm shocked about this so would be interested to know what others think and if this is more widespread. Obviously it's a big secret so I can't discuss it with people in real life.

He drives my 2 young children around, sometimes long distances and on motorways as we live the other end of the country and sometimes meet half way to hand over the children and they go to theirs by themselves (which in itself is great for all of us). But I feel really uncomfortable about them being in his car now as he doesn't have insurance (presumably). It will cause a massive issue with my partner if I stop them from being driven by him as he will think I'm overreacting. But what if he has an accident and they are seriously injured and there is no insurance? Should I just overlook it? What would you do.

My Dad never sat his test but had a licence as stated by others on here.
I'm in my 60s and certainly had to sit my test to get a licence however I don't know what the position was in the forces in the 60s/70s.

My brother was done a couple of times for driving without a full licence. He had several cars and used to boast about the good rates he got for his insurance. I never asked him how, as I didn't want to be a party to some kind of fraud. He didn't take his test because he didn't think he needed to. He thought he was a better driver than everyone else on the road, which is presumably why he was stopped for speeding and found to have no full licence. He now lives in the US and drives a truck and a bike and I wonder if he's got a proper licence over there...

If he kills your children or anyone else or seriously injures someone leaving them needing long term care his insurance company will not pay out. I personally would tell him I no longer want my children in that car. If he thinks his driving is up to scratch he can get a provisional do the theory and take a test like everyone else. Only reason for him not to is if he thinks he will fail. Every time you put your kids in that car you put them at risk. I would consider reporting him if his not willing to take the test.

You can be insured without a license.

Can you?!
Or do you mean if you don't have a UK license but you have one from another country ?

In the first instance I think I'd tell him to stop driving until he sorts it out!

I wonder if it might 'just' be some sort of paperwork issue, because it seems surprising he's not been caught otherwise, unless he's making a real effort to lie and cheat the system.

@litecraft, re your post referred to by @Sn0tnose, I agree with sn0tnose.

I think you will find that if someone has lied to an insurer the insurer will have small print which tells you that the policy is then null and void.

So if the old chap has lied and told the insurance company he has a valid licence and he does not (either because he hasn’t one at all or it’s been taken from him) then the insurer can refuse to pay out for all costs, including third party costs, citing the small print on the policy.

The compensation costs for the injured parties (which could be millions of someone sustained life changing injuries when the old chap say crashed into them when he was blinded by the sun on a corner at a bus stop or whatever) would be recovered from the old chap when the pedestrians sue him. He can be forced to sell his house to pay for their care or he could go to jail.

This effectively means the old guy is not insured if he is lying to his insurer about anything.

I think the motor insurance bureau covers things like damage caused by uninsured drivers but I don’t recall the ins and outs.

If any of that is wrong I’m happy to be corrected

If any of that is wrong I’m happy to be corrected

You’re not wrong. I think that particular poster has a fundamental misunderstanding of how insurance companies work.

It sounds like he has a provisional license. If so he wouldn't have to have someone else take the points for the speeding ticket on their license, you can accumulate points on a provisional license. And he could insure his car through a learner driver policy with just a provisional license (or he could get a form of third party, fire and theft without any license at all). It wouldn't be fully valid when he was driving as a condition of the policy would be valid supervision, but it would be valid for the vehicle in general and would allow him to tax the vehicle etc. in his own name without using a proxy.

As others have said, if he's been driving for that long without getting in an accident it isn't really a safety issue (any more than driving is always a safety issue). If he has insurance on the car third parties that are hurt in any accident may still be covered even if he was driving outside the terms of the policy (i.e. unsupervised) and, in any case, are covered by the Motorist Insurance Bureau.

Which isn't to say I think it's a good thing that your FiL is driving illegally, I don't, just that some of the dire declarations on here seem somewhat overblown. Whether I think the driving illegally is something I'd report - I'm not sure. I think that's down to how you view personal morality, family loyalty and the law. I would probably report a relative stranger, but probably not family, unless I had another reason to (like they kept drink driving or something).

Your FIL is an active driver. He has not had an accident or driving penalty that has brought him to the attention of the authorities in all these years. It is easier to get caught in modern times with all the electronic surveillance. He could get a provisional from the DVLA and then apply for learner-driver insurance (expensive) or explore being added as a learner driver to someone else's insurance. As an active road user, he would probably pass a theory test with ease, and the practical would be an easy task too. I would not allow him to drive my kids around as it is selfish if he has an accident. I would guess he is a pretty good driver with years of experience. Since he is a help to you, why don't you pay for his test fees and try to clean up this mess quietly before he gets caught?

People don't get picked up for stuff that I'm amazed at. Like driving with no MOT - for over a year. Or no MOT or tax like my neighbour
I answer questions every day to people about their MOT and get a lot of "it doesn't matter if it's a month over does it? As long as it's booked it's fine" type stuff
I know it's different but it goes unnoticed

Placemarking because now I really want to know if he's actually got a license

But yeah op I would definitely report if it turns out he doesn't

He's an idiot, a dangerous idiot most likely. I feel sorry for the poor driver, cyclist, pedestrian he hits as his insurance is void.

You need to report this.

Report it. If he does have a licence nothing will come of it, if he doesn't hopefully that'll be another unsafe uninsured driver off the roads.

I think you can get insurance without a licence although you would be getting it fraudulently as you have to say how many years you've had it and it was not be valid if you lied.

But the speeding ticket thing is weird. You would have to give your licence details for that. Unless he said it was someone else.

to grass him up

This isn’t the school play ground & nor is it a trivial matter

Frazzled2207 he doesn't need to have passed his test to hold a provisional license and he could get insurance and points with that.

My dad signed up in the 50s and served in Cyprus. He took his test in the army and he is insured.

So it is possible your FIL is legal to drive but family folk-lore and the mists of time have prevailed to render the army driving test 'forgotten'.

I remember, as a rather uptight teen, becoming even more wound up, when he'd remind us yet again that he'd never actually taken 'the driving test' (meaning the civilian version).

He’s never been insured then.
Show him all the facts and consequences. He could go to jail surely?
This should stop him driving ever again or make him take a test!! Surely he’d pass with refresher lessons in a town where no one knows him.

For all those saying you don't need to give license details for insurance purposes I have always had too! I just renewed mine in June and helped my mum to change hers in August and we had too both times. Although my renewal was easier as all the details were there so it was just a case of making the payment which is probably what your FIL has been going year after year.

Having said that though these things do fall through the cracks. Someone I know together with her husband have not renewed their licenses so have been driving with expired ones for 3 years!

I would be pushing him to get a license. It wouldn't take much work for him to get one, he would need a couple of lessons to make sure he has the manoeuvres up to scratch and take him round a test route.

The theory test could be slightly tricky. I tired the hazard perception when my DN was learning and despite 20 years of driving I struggled and would need to put work in to pass.

I've only needed to produce my license twice in 20 years, once they were doing random stops when there had been break ins in my village and another time I got pulled over for not wearing a seat belt (don't worry I learned my lesson before people jump on me). I don't even remember if I had to provide my license when I made an insurance claim (car hit when parked and written off)

Wow. I am shocked someone of his age would drive without a licence. I suppose you do it when you’re younger and more foolhardy then get complacent. Not that I ever did. Hell would freeze over before anyone from my family stepped foot in his car again until I knew he was driving legally.

I'm really surprised at the posters who say he would easily pass his theory and practice tests now. Over all these years lots of bad habits will have come in, plus what's to say he has any idea of the highway code?

Years ago probably around 20 years I got a six month ban for accumulating points
At court they didn’t take my actual licence from me so I still had the old paper style one
When the ban was up 3 or 4 years later I got a car insured it and carried on driving
In the following years 10 years I wrote off two cars ( not my fault) but I had to claim on my insurance no problem with doing this insurance company paid out both times
Then I decided to go on holiday and realised I needed a new style driving licence
I rang the DVLA as I couldn’t do it online
They told me that because I had been banned all those years ago I needed to pay I think £70 for them to reissue my licence
And that technically all those years I had been driving uninsured 😂
He did say it was quite common as people just assumed when the ban was up you could just carry on as you were before but you have to physically reapply for your licence to be reissued
My point is I wrote off two cars both were stationary at the time and I wasn’t driving them so obviously not my fault but the insurance company at no point asked to see my driving licence

Not only is he likely to be driving on at most, a provisional, it wouldn't surprise me if he doesn't have insurance at all - all that pesky paperwork. Can you be sure the car has passed a real MOT, either?

He's lucky he's just been pinged by a camera for speeding - had he been hit by another driver, the fact he's driving illegally would mean not only prosecution, but there's a good chance his decision to drive illegally would result in him being determined to be the one at fault. After all, if you're dealing with a claim, do you believe the person who has done everything relating to driving by the book - or a bloke in his sixties who thinks the law doesn't apply to him?

Fixed ANPR should pick him up sooner or later, but if not, because so many arseholes 'only drive short distances', there's a good chance a road check will. I've seen them frequently - on the dual carriageway leading from a large council estate, on the slipway to a B&Q/IKEA, round the corner from a large school, on a stretch leading to the M25 interchange, a bit leading to the A22 or one to the A23, on the A21 - multiple police forces, not just the Met or Surrey - Kent Police do them as well. And I've seen them in Devon as well - got to deal with not just the local farmers, but the Idiot tourists who think they don't have technology like computers in the southwest. I'm sure all counties and cities do the same.

Driving illegally completely invalidates the insurance if he's even got any. Doesn't matter what he does, it's invalid. If a child runs out in front of him when he's speeding, he's the uninsured driver at fault. If a little old lady falls off her mobility scooter behind him when he's reversing into a parking space, he's the uninsured driver. If a scam artist slams on their brakes ahead of him, he's the uninsured driver at fault.

The things people will do...

My mother never passed a UK driving test (born '43).

She told her father she had passed, he bought her a van, she drove that around until she moved to (what was then) Rhodesia and got a licence there (but I doubt had to do anything like a british driving test).

On returning to the UK some years later she just.... carried on driving around on that south african licence.

She married my father and I would assume, they had an insurance policy in his name that covered her rather than in her name...

Eventually in the mid 80s she was stopped for not displaying a tax disc, and I was there so I remember this clearly... they looked at her licence and explained it wasnt legal, and then off we went home and my Dad sorted it out..

How, I will never know, but effectively her illegal SA licence was swapped for a british licence and she carried on driving, if she weren't pushing up the daises now she'd likely still be driving without ever having legally passed a UK test.

I'd stop the kids going in the car with him driving, and then I'd find out if he has achieved a licence without passing a test.. or is in fact driving without a licence at all.

If the latter, try and get him to pass a test I guess. If the former, not a clue what you'd do about that!