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Driving licences issued by the EEA-countries display the place of birth of the license holder. Why is this information so important that it needs to be on the driving license?

I've tried to research this topic but all answers boil down to the fact that the directive (Directive 2006/126/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 December 2006 on driving licences) requires it. No answers are given to why the directive requires place of birth to be displayed on the license.

Laurel
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MrCool
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    What would you expect there instead? – PMF Dec 25 '22 at 15:31
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    I'm wondering why the officer looking at the driver's license needs to know the place of birth of the driver as it doesn't have any affect on one's right to drive. – MrCool Dec 25 '22 at 16:32
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    I don’t know from where the questioner comes, but I’ve always found it strange that American driving licenses apparently have the drivers height and weight. I suppose it’s just different cultural conventions. – Neil Tarrant Dec 25 '22 at 19:05
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    @NeilTarrant - identifies to help validate that the driver and the driver’s license belong to the same person. Why is there a picture? Same reason. – George White Dec 25 '22 at 20:00
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    My drivers licence (Latvia) only includes the country code (LV) for the "place of birth" – Vilx- Dec 25 '22 at 23:26
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    Cultural differences. In many places of Europe birth date plus location is a standard identifier in addition to your name (as others have mentioned, to reduce clashes, especially for people with frequently used names). So, nothing specific to the driving license itself, just a very common item when it comes to identification. The third such item is the maiden name of your mother. It's not only the driving license, my ID card (Hungary) has that data, too. – Gábor Dec 25 '22 at 23:43
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    My driver's license (Swedish) doesn't have information about place of birth. According to the Wikipedia article, Norway and Sweden don't include this information, so apparently it is not an absolute requirement. Maybe the directive only provides a format to be used for those countries that want to include that information to improve uniqueness? – jkej Dec 26 '22 at 05:30
  • @PMF It's not "instead" but "at all" – Azor Ahai -him- Dec 26 '22 at 21:24
  • Well in that case India is far better. It has Biometrics (retina and finger prints) along with the name, address, emergency contact number and blood group information – shivam Dec 27 '22 at 04:52
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    "it doesn't have any [e]ffect on one's right to drive": it is highly relevant to one's right to drive if the person claiming to be licensed to drive isn't the person named on the license. – phoog Dec 27 '22 at 11:50
  • Swiss driving licenses, like their passports, print their places of origin (or their nationality in case of foreigners) instead; it is just an additional identifier. – xngtng Dec 27 '22 at 12:36
  • There are places where a driver's license is effectively an ID (Brazil, for instance), thus having more info about its bearer is a natural thing. It can be used everywhere an ID might be needed, like boarding a plane, showing a proof that one is over 18, identifying oneself to an authority (police or any other). Not sure if this happens in EU, but might be an explanation. – gmauch Dec 27 '22 at 13:42
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    Generally speaking everytime you have to provide your "identity" you need to provide: name & surname, date of birth, place of birth. Oftentimes the tax code too (which often encodes all of the above information). In this way you can distinguish John Smith born 01/01/1970 in Rome from John Smith born 01/01/1970 in Naples. – Bakuriu Dec 27 '22 at 20:36
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    As a EU citizen I was always baffled that American driver licenses have your address on it. So if a person steals your wallet they also know where you live and might decide to rob the place, knowing that you are not home at the moment he steals your wallet. – Ivo Dec 28 '22 at 07:25
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    @gmauch Same in the Netherlands, the drivers license can often be used as ID instead of a passport. – Ivana Dec 28 '22 at 15:05

2 Answers2

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Name and date of birth are not sufficiently unique to identify a person. While name, date of birth, and place of birth do not have to be unique, either, it reduces the number of false positives. Also, date of birth is somewhat better known than place of birth for most people.

Motorist: "Sorry, officer, I seem to have lost my wallet. Everything was in there, ID, license, ..."
Cop: "Tell me your name, date and place of birth, and I'll run a query if you do have a license."

o.m.
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    For unique identification purposes some countries insert personal number of the license holder into the optional data field 4d) which uniquely identifies the driver. EEA driving licenses are also designed to be valid across the EEA, and if the driver is driving abroad the officer cannot even run a query as they don't have access to databases of an another country. And also the query doesn't need the place of birth to be printed on the license which is the point of my question. – MrCool Dec 25 '22 at 16:28
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    @MrCool, almost nobody is going to memorize that number. (In fact, a terrorist in Germany got caught because he had his fake ID card number memorized, IIRC.) You are right regarding cross-border inquiries, but his is about having an additional human-friendly "checksum" on the document. – o.m. Dec 26 '22 at 07:39
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    @o.m. I don't know of anyone who has memorised their ID card's number (the document number), but pretty much everyone I know in our little corner of Europe knows their own personal ID code by heart. – Celos Dec 26 '22 at 11:30
  • @Celos, the Baltics have a reputation for being ahead in digitalization. – o.m. Dec 26 '22 at 12:25
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    @o.m. it is the same in Bulgaria (somewhere in the middle over EU in regard to the digitalization) and it is like this well before the digitalization even became a thing. You get your government-issued 10-digit ID when born and use it whenever you fill a form. And when one gets spouse or children, memorizes their IDs as well. Not really hard because the first 6 digits are your birthdate. It is guaranteed to be unique over the country population and even has a checksum digit, – fraxinus Dec 26 '22 at 17:32
  • @o.m. Uh oh, I have my US driver's license number memorized. I think it happened over the years from shopping for auto insurance. – user71659 Dec 27 '22 at 00:17
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    @MrCool place of birth is traditionally one of the data points used to identify people. Its importance for that purpose has dwindled with the advent of photographic identify documents over the last century or so, and more recently numeric identifiers and the use of other biometric identifiers. Is your question "why did they start using place of birth" or "why didn't they stop"? – phoog Dec 27 '22 at 11:44
  • @o.m.: Besides countries already mentioned, Sweden is another place where everybody knows their “personal number” by heart. (It starts with your date of birth in (YY)YYMMDD, and I’ve heard one Swede say that he doesn’t have his own birthday memorised separately, but remembers it by thinking of his personal number.) But of course, this doesn’t detract from the point that since many countries don’t have such a system, recording place of birth is also useful for the international standard. – Peter LeFanu Lumsdaine Dec 27 '22 at 15:05
  • @o.m. - in Romania, the "Numeric personal code" is required in so many places, and is relatively easy to memorize (13 digits, first is your gender, next 6 your DOB), that many people know it (i.e. the last 6 digits) by heart. – Dan Dascalescu Dec 28 '22 at 01:03
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The document 2003/0252 (COD) provides background discussion of rationale for an earlier version of the regulation. Two important considerations regarding the EU licensing scheme are underscored: the desideratum of unique identification, and fraud prevention. The rationale relates to safety – they want to know whether a specific person has been banned from driving for safety reasons, and they are aware that people can make fraudulent claims ("That's not me, that's someone else"). Remember that the right to drive is not absolute, it can be revoked.

An earlier (earliest?) form of the proposal is Document 51988PC0705, submitted 9 Dec. 1988. where the Council of European Communities which contains the skeleton of the present law. Annex 1 gives the earlier required information. The required information is more minimalist, including Surname, other names, place and date of birth, permanent place of residence, and other information on the issuance of the license (where, when valid, who issued). Given this sparse required information, name, place and date of birth will generally uniquely identify the license holder.

It is true that unique identification can be accomplished in various ways, but the reason why the current rule is what it is is because nobody has persuasively argued for an alternative rule that does not include date and place of birth, and date of birth would be independently necessary w.r.t. rules governing minimum age of drivers. Since the requirement was present in 1988, it was just copied from version to version over the decades.

user6726
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