by Mr Benn » Wed Feb 01, 2012 5:39 am
Yeah the whole Irish license being ok for a year is something of a gray area. Once you're a legal resident, you're supposed to have a Massachusetts license and there isn't any grace period. But if you're not a resident, you can drive on your Irish one for a year. How you could be in MA for a year without being a resident is beyond me.
Getting a license is pretty easy. You do the learner's permit test... there's a lot of questions about specific fines etc, but once you've read the handbook the night before should be ok. I was asked some daft questions... what percentage of highway deaths are caused by alcohol (40%), and what the maximum penalty was for a junior operator driving between the hours of 12 and 5am or something like that (I was 23 taking the test, a junior operator is between 16 and 18, so was a pretty dumb question to be asked). Once you've done that, you can do the actual driving test. You need a sponsor, i.e. someone with a MA license for over a year... a lot of people did it with a driving school, which costs a good bit. I did it in a mates car. Test was a walk in the park compared to the Irish one, lasted all of 4 minutes. Drive around the block, turn left, turn right, 3 point turn, parallel park, hand signals... that was about it.
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