A Driving School in France Hits a Wall of Regulations

Oh man, the whole driving school process in France is so dumb and painful. It is layers of bureaucracy upon layers of bureaucracy. It is the worst in Paris, where you are going to have to wait longer and pay more to get a license. I have an increasing number of friends in their late 20s/early 30s who live in large French cities and don't even have a license - they live and work in the city, so it's not a problem for them.

When they do need to visit family in the more rural areas, they either take the train, or use a carpooling service (the most popular one is blablacar.com, which has been taking off like crazy in the recent years. The vast majority of French people I talk to when I go back home have heard of it- one of the few innovative French startups).

In France, I spent a year and half and about 1500 euros in driving lessons related stuff and didn't get my license. When I first moved to the US (southern state), it cost me something like 30 bucks and 30 minutes of my time. The test consisted of driving around the block, and parking the car (only snag: the inspector by my side, a rather overweight lady, told me that I'd lose points the further away I parked from the DMV's front door. I thought she was joking, but she wasn't).

The conservative French people say that more expensive, stricter, longer times for obtaining a driver license leads to safer roads; but if you compare US driving fatalities to French ones, there's not much of a difference- and people in the US drive way more than they do in France.

Like many other aspects of French culture, it's ridiculous how deeply legislated it is, and how the only ones benefitting from it are the ones making the rules. I find certain aspects of the US driving culture a little too much on the other extreme of the spectrum (learner's permit at 14? the driving test being just a drive around the block? the written test being a multiple choice questionnaire with the answers available on YouTube?), but France is worse by far, and it's hurting young professionals (my brother is without a college degree, and when he was unemployed he found that most jobs in rural areas require a car- but getting a license takes forever and is expensive. So that was a few months where he could do little but wait to get his driving license).

As a 29, unemployed, native french man, this shows perfectly how france has many examples of over-regulations. I'm currently doing driving lessons, the unemployment institution, pole emploi paid for 90% of the cost. It cost something like 30 or 50 euros per hour. It's crazy when you think how important transportation is in a developed country.

I'm usually for socialism in general, but not if it completely hinders the economy and reduce opportunity, and sets in monopolies.

The government recently did a study, and it showed that small but important local businesses like pharmacists, bakeries, notaires (civil law notaries), tobacco sellers, alcohol resellers, kiosks, doctors, and many more, are heavily regulated, and tend to be monopolies because the government don't deliver that many licenses.

It's weird because I tend to have leftish beliefs when it comes to politics, but you can't deny that you need to relax the rules if you don't want to have those kinds of situations.

I never worked more than 2 months in total in my life, I just wish I could just pick a shovel and do any kind of demeaning work for a change, just for the sanity of waking up in the morning to do something. It's just not possible because of labor laws and a high minimum wage. France is anti-liberal in many aspects, and it's not just sad, it's just depressing. I just can't like my country. I like many things, but in terms of economic opportunities, it's soviet-like. People just receive welfare, stay unemployed, get unmotivated, and this settles in, and there's nothing concrete you can really do for a change if you don't have a network.

At least in the US, there are shitty jobs by default. In france, the only one negociating are the unions. Companies can't even fire people unless they did real damage to the company. Nobody gets hired because of that.

Sometimes I honestly believe I could try to just become an illegal immigrant and go to places where they give work to strangers, but it's hard to give up comfort.

It's a life of being rewarded for being lazy. It's weird.

No wonder I meet so many French programmers in Silicon Valley.

They always seem to pine for France, but they still stay in California. Its also really weird how fond and romantically they look upon such regulations. You'd think that they would be furious at the thought of such regulations in America, but they are actually pretty sympathetic about them. Even though such regulations have tied up the job market in France so much that they have been driven to a new continent, they still have faith in the State to fix things with rules.

That is one of the reasons I think libertarians can never win in the long run. Even very smart engineers have boundless optimism for the capacity of human managers to micromanage complicated systems like entire national economies. They also have boundless faith that bad actors and inside players can be prevented from manipulating regulations for their own benefit.

Here is my French driver's license horror story. I was an American expat living in Paris for 2 years. Fortunately, I had a Texas driver's license which is apparently one of a few states with reciprocal privileges, so all I had to do was exchange my Texas license for a French one, no class, no test. However, it took me 5 trips down to the French DMV, each time taking a number and waiting an hour. Each time, the clerk would find something else wrong with my application, even though my company had a French attorney assisting me, and I usually had a note from the previous clerk saying all I needed was one thing. Finally, all I needed was a copy of my Texas driving history. Texas does not provide a certified copy since you are able to download a copy from the website. Of course, France did not accept this. So, I wrote Texas DMV and asked them to mail me a certified copy. They sent me basically the same download. France did not accept it, but said the cover letter was certification enough, if I had it translated. Taking a number and an hour later at the US embassy, I had my translated document, which France finally accepted and issued my a license in exchange for my Texas license.

Then, 2 weeks later, I get a letter from the French DMV. They were not going to accept the letter and said I needed to come down and turn in the license they had issued me and bring in a properly certified driving record from Texas.

I gave up. I did not comply with this letter and kept the French driver's license. Fortunately, I was never pulled over and did not have any problems. When I left the country, I went back to exchange my French driver's license for my Texas one. I got a nasty scolding from the clerk, but I just played the dumb American and she eventually gave me my Texas license back.

I have to say, the absurd bureaucracy in France was not limited to the DMV, and I have more horror stories about the government regulations and bureaucracy there.

It reminded me of this[1] recent Tyler Cowen article that is basically arguing that France and other European countries will have long-term negative growth, mostly because they are over-regulated and hence cannot adapt to changes.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/24/upshot/lesson-from-old-ind...

Disclaimer: I am from France and now, I am living in the U.S. since 2 years.

This article rings true. Driving in the U.S. is 100 times easier than back in France. The driving test is easy, if there is one! (I lived in Austin, Texas doesn't have anything OR at least doesn't have almost anything that looks like a driving test from a french perpective.)

I've spent something like 3,400 Euros to get my permit back in France, and I've waited maybe 9 months. It's true they are not giving away easily spots for the tests and it's also true that they try to get you doing as much as hours as possible.

Less new drivers a year, selection of the best, many hours of practice, no easy passing, hell, this sounds like a dream!

They have half the rate of traffic accident as US or my country (Poland), so here's one obvious gain. I'm curious about the public and private transport infrastructure there - there seems to be an economic incentive to develop it.

I see the obvious injustices described in the article, but overall, this time it seems to have a positive effect. What the world needs is definitely not easier ways for people to get driving licenses.

I don't exactly see the wall of regulation. In France, as in Germany, you have to learn driving through an instructor, you can not do it in your parents car as it most likely lacks the necessary emergency controls for an actual licensed driver. Hence the cost, mostly paying for 20+ hrs of an instructors time.

There is only a limited amount of exam slots, and they are assigned based on previous pass rates, ensuring you don't waste it on unprepared students. That seems like a perfectly sane policy when there's only a low fixed amount of exam slots. In Germany, you pay a fee (to the government) for the exam, so its possible to add more tester.

I don't want to throw away all regulations. If France has a good cheap internet and reasonable prices (compared to the US) and contracts terms for communications, it's thanks to heavy regulations. There are heavy regulations in consumer protections that I really miss in the US, where you never know what something will cost (taxes and tips are never on the sticker price), the contracts can be and routinely are leonine, and everybody is trying to rip you off all the time.

This is great news actually, hopefully with the economy in France becoming worse and worse they will finally be forced to change - it was possible to bail out Greece and to some extend Spain, but there is no way, shape or form where we actually bail out France, not even partially.

Deregulation and freeing the economy worked for Germany (they used to be considered the sick man of Europe) there is no reason it couldn't work for France.