This Is the Easiest Country to Learn How to Drive

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Sep 22, 10:30AM EDT

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This Is the Easiest Country to Learn How to Drive — © simondee / Flickr

Getting a driver’s license is a rite of passage for many of America’s teenagers. (In most states, the age at which people can get a license is 16.) Earning a license usually includes taking a course to give new drivers the basics of road safety and driving rules. Generally, this is followed by a written test and then a test in which an official rates the driver on the road.

The difficulty of getting a license varies substantially from country to country. The United States is among the easiest countries in which to acquire a license, according to new research. Car driver test site Zutobi has just released a research report titled “The Easiest & Hardest Countries to Learn to Drive – Global Zutobi Index.”

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The universe of nations included in the story was 108. This was cut by several screens. These included countries that are Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) members (38), those with a score of 8 or above on the human development index and nations with one of the top 50 largest gross domestic products in the world. This list was ranked based on these factors:

Age you can drive.

Cost of a driving test.

Is a theory test required?

Is a practical test required?

Is an eye test required?

Is a medical exam required?

Hours of mandatory lessons to take the test.

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Countries were rated on a scale of 1 to 10. The higher the score, the easier the test. Mexico topped the list of easiest countries to get a driver’s license. The primary reason is the lack of strict tests. Throughout most of the country, there is no practical test to get a license. Instead, there is only a “theory” test. Until 2018, there were no tests of any kind. People can get a driver’s license at age 15. Mexico had a score of 8.48.

Next on this list is Qatar, which allows people who are 14 to get a license. Latvia follows, and it has among the lowest costs to get a driver’s license among all the nations rated. The United States is the fourth, because people who apply for a license do not have to have a set number of hours of driving before the test.

These are the 10 easiest countries to get a driver’s license:

Mexico (8.48)
Qatar (7.39)
Latvia (7.03)
United States (6.95)
Canada (6.93)
Estonia (6.92)
Barbados (6.90)
Indonesia (6.87)
Philippines (6.86)
France (6.79)

Click here to see which cities have the best and worst commutes.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.