Starting today, all drivers will be required to hold a credit card-sized driving licence. In Ticino there are at least 4,000 people who have not carried out the replacement and will be subject to fines.
Starting today the old blue paper driving license will no longer be valid. All drivers they must have a credit card-sized driving licence. Despite this, not everyone in Ticino has replaced it. “In our canton we still have around 10,000 blue licenses in circulation, of which 6,000 belong to untraceable people or those who have left for abroad”, he explains to Ticinonews Elia Arrigonihead of the Circulation Section. In concrete terms, “we are therefore talking about around 4,000 blue licences. From December last year to around mid-August this year, we invited over 23,000 warning letters. As a result, we are around 14,000 blue licenses converted.”
As often happens in these cases, there are quite a few who waited until the last moment before proceeding with the replacement, with a consequent increase in waiting times. “We invite all those who have not yet done so to take immediate action, following the instructions in the information letter they received personally or by visiting our internet page, and to proceed as soon as possible”, continues Arrigoni.
In the meantime, however, it is more prudent to leave the car in the garage at home. Anyone who were to come across a police check would in fact find themselves confronted with a disciplinary fine of 20 francs. “It’s not that I’m driving without permission. I’m simply not carrying the document with me, as the law requires”, explains Arrigoni. The idea of the disciplinary fine “is precisely to sanction minor infractions. It is therefore not a particularly serious behavior, but an attitude that is sanctioned.” However, the situation is different for foreign countries “where it could be much more complex for the authorities to verify that the person driving is actually the holder of the licence”. And in the absence of the same “the checks could be much longer and therefore generate various problems”.
In addition to being harder to forge and more convenient to carry, the credit card-sized driving license complies with European standards. And this for both versions currently in circulation. The old paper license, however, is definitively retiring, not without a bit of nostalgia. “It is an object that is in the hearts of many of us, especially those who may have owned it for many years or even decades. We actually sent several of them back to the elderly owners,” concludes Arrigoni.
