Is my driving license ok for the car rental? Check our guidelines

driving license (Flickr - Ed Seymour (CC BY-ND 2.0))

So you've booked your car rental, packed your suits and ready to go. But, have you checked if your driving license is ok? Sometimes a quick control can avoid a lot of stress at the beginning of the rental, especially after you waited ages for your turn standing in line at the car rental desk. Here what our partners ask their customers about the driving documents.

• the driver must always be in possession of the original driving license;
• the driving license must be valid upon pick up of vehicle and its expiry date must be later than the drop off of vehicle;
• no cancellations and/or erasures must be present on the driving license;
• no amendments and/or adjustments are allowed unless they are certified (with date and stamp) by an appropriate Authority;
• the driving license must report the driver's photo and signature,
• to drive in Italy, all driving licenses issued by countries member of the European Community are valid but the driver must be in possession of a valid passport as well;
• as far as concerns all driving licenses issued by any country not member of the European Community, the driver must be in possession (together with the driving license, of course) of a proper International Driving Permission whose validity is of 1 year so it needs to be in regular course of validity;
• all driving licenses reporting non-latin characters (e.g. arabian, chinese, japanese, cyrillic and so on) are not accepted unless they have been translated by the Embassy or Consulate in latin characters;
• in no cases military driving licenses, temporary driving licenses, copies of driving licenses are accepted.

And just to be double sure, if this is your first car rental, make sure to bring with you a valid identification card with photo.