you can tell that my driver's license
hey guys what's up it's Kelly again and welcome back to my channel the other day
I was trolling some German news and there was this article that caught my
attention so in Germany there was an 18 year old guy who had just gotten his
driver's license and only 49 short minutes later he got it taken right back
away from him for speeding he was going 95 kilometers per hour in a 50 km/h zone
and he had four of his friends in the car with him when the Polizei pulled
him over and took away his driver's license
slapped him with a heavy fine and now he has to do some very expensive retraining
in order to get his license back I think the greatest part of this story though
is that a police officer was quoted saying "some things last in eternity
others not even an hour" how philosophical. anyway reading this story
provoked the idea for me to do a video comparing US driver's licenses to German
driver's licenses and in the beginning of this video I will talk about what you
have to do to get a driver's license in each country and then the second part I
will show you guys my driver's license and compare it to my boyfriend's German
driver's license alright let's get started first things first and this is
probably more of a disclaimer than anything but i just want to remind
everyone that the United States is comprised of a lot of states shocking I
know but each of those states has its own
laws it has its own driver's license and the laws to get that driver's license
vary state to state so while I'm talking throughout this video please remember
this and understand that I'm going to speak a bit more generally or just give
like a range of information to address like the majority of the states. so again
every state has its own design of a driver's license but you can tell that
my driver's license was issued in Pennsylvania because it clearly has
Pennsylvania written on it and most states are good about honoring each
other's driver's licenses and driver's exams so if I were to move to a state
outside of Pennsylvania in order to get a new
his license for that particular state all I would really need to do is show
them my valid Pennsylvania license and then they would issue me a license for
that state. Germany on the other hand has a federal driver's license so the
driver's license is the same and all of the laws pertaining to it across the
sixteen bundeslande and even further the european union has a standardized
european union driver's license for those living in the 28 EU Member States
you can tell that this driver's licence was issued in Germany because it's
written in German and also because in the upper left-hand corner it has a "D" for
Deutschland. in the US the minimum age to obtain a driver's license like I said
varies but it can be as low as 14 years and 3 months in South Dakota and as high
as 17 years in New Jersey. most states have a thing called a graduating
licensing law which means that newly licensed teenagers will have certain
restrictions applied to their license up to a certain age for example you might
have a curfew in a certain state or you might be restricted as to how many
passengers you can have in your car at one time or maybe even those passengers
like in Utah have to be members of your family for the first certain period of
the time that you have your license in some states there's also a thing called
a hardship license for minors which essentially allows minors ages 14 and 15
to get a very restricted driver's license in the event of a serious
hardship within their family so for example if a parent or parents have a
serious medical issue that prohibits them from being able to drive the
fourteen-year-old of that family could apply for a hardship license in order to
get themselves to and from school so in these states because of this law you
could have someone as young as 14 driving on the road. in Germany the
minimum age to obtain a driver's license is 17 so long as you have a legal
guardian in the car with you at all times when you're driving or age
eighteen to obtain an unrestricted driver's license and when you're
seventeen and you're driving you don't even get a standard driver's license you
get more of like a permission slip that says you're
legally allowed to drive under parental supervision and then once you turn 18
then you're able to go out and get an actual driver's license
in the u.s. most high schools will provide driver's ed training but i
will say that that varies greatly from school to school so where I went to
school all of my driver's ed training was taught entirely in the classroom
whereas I have a friend who went to a school only 40 minutes away and her
experience was entirely different she got to do classroom training just like I
did but also practical lessons out in a car provided by the school district
unlike a closed driving course on campus otherwise it's entirely up to the
student to study on their own unless their parent or legal guardian is
willing to pay for them to get private driver's lessons through privately owned
driving schools but this is completely optional except in some states for
adults who are seeking to obtain a driver's license it is required for them
to pay and take these driver's lessons most states mandate that a student
driver has to hold a permit for a certain period of time such as six
months before they're even allowed to take their driver's exam to get that
permit you have to take and pass a theoretical exam and then with that
permit you can only drive under the supervision of a legal guardian
you'll also log every hour that you drive because you have to get to a
specified number of hours in order to then take your driver's test in addition
to that mandatory time period that I mentioned earlier the final test to get
your driver's license is a practical exam which always consists of a road
test and then some states might require you to execute a three-point turn or
parallel parking and the test is usually taken in whatever car the student shows
up in so there is no special car that they have to take it in and I remember
in high school a lot of my friends were trying to find the smallest car that
they could in order to make that parallel parking part of the test as
easy as possible as soon as you pass the test you can go right inside the DMV
and get your driver's license. in Germany you're required to go to a legally
authorized driver's training which is mostly done through
privately-owned driver's schools you have to pass an eye exam and complete an
entire eight-hour first-aid training course before you can apply to take your
driver's exam like the US the German driver's exam also consists of a
theoretical portion and a practical portion for the theoretical portion you
have to sit through like 20 hours of PowerPoint slides and videos to explain
the rules of the road riddled with anecdotes and car talk and my boyfriend
told me that German drivers instructors just love to share stories and all of
these outrageous anecdotes to try to make the points they want to make
throughout the training and I want to know if you guys have any of these crazy
anecdotes from your drivers instructors that you remember that you want to share
with me and if you do don't forget to put them in the comments so I can read
them some schools will require you to take some of these theory lessons before
they even let you out onto the road but eventually you will take a theory test
and then you can focus entirely on the practical application and unlike my
experience in the u.s. in Germany you do all of your drivers training through a
very special car which is equipped with like extra mirrors and an extra set of
pedals so that your drivers instructor can sit in the passenger seat next to
you but still have full control of the car if needed and that's the car that
you will do about 30 to 40 hours worth of practical training in before you take
your practical exam to get your driver's license and the practical exam is about
45 minutes throughout a city and you will have your driver's instructor next
to you in the passenger's seat as usual but the guy administering the test will
be in the backseat behind you and that person
administering the test will tell you exactly where to drive what turn to make
where to park and so on meanwhile your instructor still has like these
additional pedals I talked about but now they're hooked up to a beeper which is
tested before you ever even start your exam to make sure that it's adequately
hooked up and if at any point your driver instructor feels the need to push
a pedal whether it's because you didn't stop somewhere you were supposed to stop
or there's a car or whatever the reason may be if he has to hit the pedal then
the buzzer will go off and you automatically fail
the exam after you pass the practical test you are instantly rewarded with
your driver's license the cost to get a driver's license in the u.s. varies from
state to state but it's usually under $100 because you're getting that
driver's education through high school for free and really you're just paying
for the test and the physical license itself the cost to get a driver's
license in Germany can also vary greatly but on average it's about 1,400 euro
which as of today is like sixteen hundred US dollars I think most people
know that in the u.s. we primarily drive automatic cars but whether you take the
test in an automatic or a manual transmission you will get the same exact
driver's license but in Germany if a student chooses to take the test in an
automatic which is arguably easier to drive than a manual transmission then
you will get a license denoting that you are legally only authorized to drive
automatic transmission vehicles and not manuals until you take the test in a
manual car and both the US and Germany have point systems where a driver can be
issued points for committing special traffic offenses and while these points
do expire once you accumulate so many you can have your license temporarily
suspended or completely revoked you can also have your license just taken away
from you in both countries just like in the story about the German I told you
guys in the beginning of this video all right now I'm going to compare my
physical driver's license to my boyfriends German driver's license and
again like I said in the beginning of this video my driver's license was
issued in Pennsylvania so it will look very different from a driver's license
from like Texas or Maine or Oregon or so on even though it might have a lot of
the same information so the first thing you might notice is that they are the
exact same size and they are both made of a plastic although mine is a bit of a
heavier plastic than what my boyfriend's license is made of you'll also notice
that each of us have our photo I know that we drew over Misha's photo for this
video but we both have like a headshot photo for our driver's license and then
each driver's license has that special sort of hologram effect
so it proves that it's like a real driver's license and not just like a
fabricated copy of one underneath my photo you'll see that it says organ
donor that's an option that drivers in Pennsylvania are given and if you decide
to be an organ donor it goes right there on your license
Misha told me that in Germany they do have this organ donor option as well but
it has nothing to do with their drivers license so it would not be on there both
of our drivers licenses have our date of birth it has the date that the driver's
license was issued and it also has the date that the driver's license expires
German driver's licenses expire in 15 years whereas in the u.s. it varies
state to state there are some states where they expire as short as four years
and some states lasts as long as twelve years but in most states if you're under
the age of 18 then your driver's license will last only two years my driver's
license it only indicates the state in which it was issued whereas in misha's
again the German driver's license is a federal license it does say the city in
which it was issued in which is Mainz which is where we met and I found that a
little interesting and he explained to me that it's because they don't have
national registries across Germany instead they're much more locally kept
so if he has an issue with his driver's license and this indicates that the city
of Mainz is the wine that has all the records pertaining to his license my
license does have my personal address underneath my photo but that in no way
indicates where the license was issued in fact for a period of time my license
had a Texas address on it not even a Pennsylvania address and then conversely
Misha's license doesn't have his address of residency anywhere on it but what
Misha's license does have is the city in which he was born which I found to be
really interesting I blocked it out but that would go nowhere on my license
there's no indication of even what state I was born in let alone what city I was
born in and then on my license there are physical descriptions of me and so it
says that I'm a female it says that I have blue eyes and it says that I'm five
foot six and on these shows there is no physical description of him at all
beyond the photo my driver's license clearly indicates that I'm allowed to
drive Class C vehicles which is like your standard car I haven't done any
additional driver's training to be able to get like a motorcycle license for
example which again motorcycle licenses vary state-by-state but there are
additional requirements you have to fulfill in order to be legally allowed
to drive a motorcycle and on Misha's he also has the list of classifications
of vehicles that he's allowed to drive underneath his photo here and then on
the back there's like this entire diagram that shows what type of vehicles
this license holder is able to drive and Misha did go and get his motorcycle
license in Germany which of course cost extra money I think he said it was about
a thousand euro and he had to do a bunch of extra training in order to get that
license but with his standard German driver's license he was legally
authorized to drive like a small scooter or even a small tractor alright guys
that's all I've got for you today I hope that you enjoyed this video and if you
did don't forget to give it a big thumbs up
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