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The American Automobile Association (AAA) and the American Automobile Touring Alliance (AATA) are the only organizations that issue official International Driving Permit (IDP) for US driver licenses.

However, there exist some organizations that issue unofficial IDPs, such as:

Are such unofficial International Driving Permits of any use? I'm curious about both digital and physical unofficial IDPs.

Franck Dernoncourt
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1 Answers1

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There are two main reasons to get an IDP:

  1. You cannot legally drive a car in a foreign country without one (eg Japan).

  2. Rental agencies will not rent a car to you without one. Often the same set of countries as 1, but not always: for example, Malaysia no longer requires an IDP, but many agencies never got the memo and insist on one anyway.

A fake/unrecognized IDP will not qualify for reason 1, and you risk serious fines and potentially jail time for essentially driving without a license if caught by police.

For rental agencies, a convincing-looking fake IDP may well pass muster without exposing you to criminal penalties, so it could potentially be useful... except that if the T&C requires a real IDP, and you don't have one, this will invalidate any insurance. So I still wouldn't risk it.

All that said, a real IDP from the AAA costs only $20, while the fakes often cost much more -- the primary target audience seems to be people without ID at all, not tourists venturing overseas.

Here's the AAA and FTC on the topic: https://www.seattletimes.com/life/travel/aaa-warns-of-fake-international-driving-permits/

lambshaanxy
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