At 12:45 AM 12/18/2002 +0000, Adam Back wrote:
If I recall some time ago (years ago) there was some discussion on list of using non-US drivers licenses or out-of-state drivers licenses I think to get around this problem. I thought it was Duncan Frissell or Black Unicorn who offered some opinions on this.
An International Drivers' License and a real license from another country is almost always good enough to let you drive in a state you don't live in, and almost never enough to officially drive in a state you officially live in, for definitions of "officially live in" that are more or less flexible depending on who's asking, and what the address of your car registration is, and whether you're registered to vote there, whether you carry a passport and have a foreign accent, and whether you own a house (which is a rather visible activity) or rent (which is less visible), and whether you've got somewhere else that you appear to live, and whether your out-of-state car keeps getting parking tickets in the same city for months, and things like that.
I have heard of one case where somebody was stopped in Nevada, and instead of presenting his California driver's license, if any, he presented his somewhere-in-the-Caribbean non-photo license and an international driver's license, and that was just fine for Nevada. It wouldn't have been fine if he was a Nevada resident, but he wasn't. I forget if this person was driving a company car or his own. A surprising number of people I used to know worked for corporations in Nevada and drove company cars, and seemed to have business in the Bay Area a lot, and their Nevada credit cards seemed to work just fine here. (Nevada's taxes are much lower.) But it's much tougher to do that if you're a married couple and have kids in public school. California, like many states, doesn't take a full fingerprint set, but they do take a thumbprint using a digital reader. Rubber cement is rumoured to be helpful. I don't know about Washington, but I doubt you'll have much better luck unless you want to work hard at it, at least in Seattle, at least if you're an employee who gets a salary that's reported. If you're living in Vancouver WA (across the river from Portland OR), then it's easier for you to happen to be in the other state a lot and park your car across the border every other weekend.
