Driving Licenses

Yesterday, Steve and I went to get our Brazilian Driver’s licenses. It was a surreal affair and had to be seen to be believed.

It started, not as one might expect at a driving test center as in the UK, or at the equivalent of the Department of Motor Vehicles as in the United States. Instead, we went to a dingy fourth floor doctor’s office. In my time of traveling around to different countries I always wonder why these places have to be quite so awful. The worst by far was the doctor’s office in New Jersey where we had to have medicals done to obtain our green cards. That was so disgusting that one didn’t want to even sit on the chairs. Time and time again, we encounter grim offices that serve as the place to go to obtain one form of documentation or another - ugh.

But back to the Driving Test. Well at least we went in person. Telling the story after the event, a friend told us that she had a Brazilian license that just “came in the post”. She hadn’t attended anything. Obviously, we hadn’t paid enough money.

We had been told that the process would take between a half hour and an hour. We took with us a lawyer from the same law firm that had helped us with our original visas. Remembering the time in March when we waited 8 hours to get our fingerprints taken, my expectations as to the amount of time this was going to take was not high to say the least.

But actually, it was reasonably efficient. We went in together, sat next to each other in what appeared to be an examination room and awaited instructions.

I had been told that taking a driving test in Brazil involves no actual driving or knowledge of any road based rules. Rather it involves taking lots of brain tests. Quite what the correlation is between brain teasers and driving I have no idea, but our limited amount of Portuguese was no handicap.

The first test consisted of a picture or series of pictures that needed to be completed. So for instance, the first one was a picture of a horse without a tail. There were then 6 further pictures each bearing a letter with the idea that you pick the picture that completed the horse. One could have picked an ear, a second head, a leg, a tail, a hoof or a muzzle. Funnily enough, we both picked the tail.

And so this is how the driving test worked. Forty brain teasers each getting progressively harder. I made it to 36, Steve to 39. Only afterwards did we discover that we only needed to hit 50%.

The second test was a sheet full of arrows pointing left, right, up and down. Some were filled in, some blank and some with dots. The idea was to shade in pencil over the arrows pointing right that were filled in, arrows pointing left that were left unfilled and arrows pointing down with a dot in them. After five minutes of that, you were really left with spots before the eyes.

The last of these tests comprised of 6 simple geometric shapes that had to be copied in boxes alongside the originals. There was a circle with a line through, a rectangle with a diagonal line, a star, a square with the corner missing, some funny shape comprising all of the above and a sixth that I have forgotten - it was obviously not that memorable.

So we passed that bit. Now I thought, on to the medical. We were after all at the doctors.

The “medical” comprised having our blood pressure taken and answering a series of questions, such as “do you smoke?”, “drink excessively?”, “take illegal drugs?” – the sort of thing that you would be mad to answer “yes” to.

Finally there was the eye exam. Now I wear contact lenses so I had no problem. Steve on the other hand wears glasses and without them really can’t see that well. Funny thing – needing glasses to see, but he had to remove his glasses for the test so not surprisingly didn’t do very well. No problem said the doctor; just remember to wear your glasses when you drive!

So 30 minutes, R$ 118 each later I think we have passed. The licenses will come in the post in about a week. Once we have them, Marcelo will be able to break the speed limit, jump red traffic lights and break the embargo that operates whereby our car cannot go into the center of the city at certain times on Thursday. All because now that we have our licenses, we can be the “designated” drivers for collecting penalty points.

I have no intention of driving here, not least because all the other road users have been through the same test that we did and it doesn’t inspire me with much confidence as to actual driving ability.

I’ll leave the driving to Marcelo and happily take his points, not that I think I will ever need to.