DRIVER’S LICENCE: EXPLOSION OF FRESH FRAUDS | M6 | Enquête Exclusive

The French driver’s licence is one of the most difficult to obtain in the world! And also one of the most expensive: €1,800 on average. Every year, one and a half million candidates take their chance… and almost half of them fail! As a consequence, frauds are said to be exploding: starting with those who manage to skip the first stage of the licence: the Highway Code. Since examination centres were privatized in 2016, purchasing this step seems to be much easier than before. The teams from Enquête Exclusive demonstrate this in an edifying sequence where they manage to get a visually impaired young woman through the Code! Even more concerning: the documentary reveals several ways to pass the practical test, driving, without every having had a single lesson! With the complicity of shady driving schools and several corrupt driving test examiners (even though employed by the Ministry of the Interior!). Astonishing as it may seem, in France, in 2020, you just need to pay to obtain your licence! A real licence, absolutely undetectable, and valid for life! But all these scams have such a high price (from €1,200 for the Code and up to €5,000 for the driving test) that some people simply choose to drive without a licence! There are more than 600,000 of them in France and they cause three times more fatal accidents than lawful drivers. The Police force is waging a merciless war on them, but it’s not without risk. As shown in the gripping opening sequence of the documentary where three CRS motorcycle officers pursue an illegal driver through a public housing estate in Vénissieux, near Lyon, before being attacked by young people from the estate. At the end of the documentary, another, perfectly legal, method of obtaining one’s licence easily is treated: when one is a resident of more than six months standing in one of the 147 countries or States with which France has reciprocal arrangements for the exchange of driving licences, one can obtain the licence in that country then exchange it for a French licence, totally legal and valid for life! The documentary takes the Ivory Coast as an example: here it’s clearly very simple to obtain a licence. A barely credible sequence shows a young Ivory Coast woman driving through the crowded streets of Abidjan, just after obtaining her licence: a real danger to the public! It’s hard to believe, that this young woman could, if she came to live in France, drive on our roads, and perfectly legally at that!