I have a license but no car. It allows me to rent cars or trucks when I need them, and most rentals either come with insurance or the option to purchase it. There’s no recurring cost.

Absolutely no good reason not to have a license. Be it for the occasional rental or borrowing someone’s car once in a while. Or just being able to drive someone’s car across town if something happened.

I’m very familiar with Florida’s rules about this. You can have a driver’s license just fine and not be required to pay anything. The scenario you’re worried about is if you have a driver’s license and a car registered and tagged (license plate) at the DMV. If you have a valid license plate and no insurance, the DMV either wants the valid plate back, or you’re forced to get car insurance, or else your driver’s license will be suspended. They do this to prevent uninsured people from driving around with valid tags (license plates), basically by getting insurance, registering the vehicle with the DMV to get a valid plate, and then canceling the insurance or letting it lapse, in order to “appear” like a valid driver.

Additionally, if you have a vehicle in your driveway and no valid license plate, you can be cited by the local government’s code enforcement department, for having an unregistered (junk) vehicle in your driveway. I don’t remember exactly what the citation was for, but I’ve received one when I was young and first getting into the car hobby. I’m a car enthusiast and I have always had multiple vehicles, and have been told by my city I had to either register the car, get it out of view (I think getting it covered up with a car cover counts, but they really want you to put it in a garage), or get rid of it. Some municipalities don’t care, some care and don’t enforce it, and some do enforce this.

Also, a car insurance company wants to know about every licensed driver in the household, because they could potentially be sharing cars with you. You don’t want to tell the insurance company that you have roommates or they’ll require you to add them to your car insurance policy, which will be very costly. If they somehow find out, just tell them their information is old and that the individual has recently moved out of the house.

If you have any other questions or if I’ve forgotten something, let me know and I’ll give you the answer.

The longer you have your license, the cheaper your car insurance will be if you do eventually get a car. From the point of view of an insurance company, having the license and never driving is exactly like having the license, driving a lot, and getting zero tickets or accidents.

The only downside for me is my horrible photo. Other than that, it only functions as an extra form of ID.

You don’t need car insurance until you actually buy a car so you’re good there. It will require being renewed every few years but that’s a lot cheaper than the auto insurance. I say grab it. Like you said, could be useful if you ever need to drive someone in case of an emergency, or want to take over on road trip or something like that.

Insurance is a complicated issue and it varies by state.

Generally, though, no, you won’t have to pay anything.

If you live with others who drive and do have insurance, they may need to add you as an excluded driver on their policy to avoid affecting their rates, but that, again, varies by state, and also, insurance carrier. I would just talk to an agent in your state.

If you just want an ID, most states offer essentially an ID card that’s exactly like a license, but just the ID part. Might want to look into that, too.

Simply having a license is inconsequential. It costs nothing once acquired, unless you want to renew it when it expires. Insurance only applies if you own a car… If you don’t own or operate a vehicle then no entity cares whether you have a driver’s license.

Soooo… What county are we talking? The US defaultism starts to take over like it did on Reddit…
Lemmy.WORLD guys