The license is used for reasons of safety and traffic regulation: it is necessary that anyone who drives a motor vehicle is able to control it and knows the rules of road traffic. The first “licensees” were introduced at the dawn of the history of the automobile, in the 1880s, but precise regulations were only issued during the twentieth century. In Italy the first national rules for obtaining a driving license were introduced in 1901. Since then the legislation has been modified several times, also to adapt to European standards. The most recent innovations, introduced in 2026, concern the methods of carrying out the exam.
Because you need a license to drive
The license is necessary because driving a motor vehicle involves having to maneuver a potentially dangerous vehicle in a space shared with other people. More specifically, three reasons can be identified that explain the need for a driving licence:
- Safety: a car, a motorcycle or a truck can cause serious damage to people or things. The license certifies that a person knows the rules of road traffic and is capable of controlling the vehicle.
- Traffic regulation: it is possible to travel on the roads because everyone follows the same rules (rights of way, speed limits, signs, etc.): without mandatory training, which requires everyone to know the rules, traffic would become more chaotic and dangerous.
- Legal responsibility: the license allows the authorities to verify who is authorized to drive and to sanction those who do not respect the rules.
The driving licence, essentially, serves to reduce the risk of accidents and to make traffic more orderly and safe from a legal point of view.
The origins of the driving licence
The history of the license is logically intertwined with that of motor vehicles. The first “licensees” were issued in the 1880s, the period when the first automobiles were being built. The first “permission to drive“was in fact issued in Paris to a manufacturer, Leon Serpollet, who produced steam tricycles. Five years later in Germany a circulation permit was issued to Karl Benz, the engineer considered the inventor of the automobile, because he was the first to apply the internal combustion engine to a vehicle.
The first “licences”, however, were not regulated by specific laws, but were authorizations to drive specific vehicles on the roads, generally issued by local authorities using hand-filled sheets. Furthermore, as precise regulations did not yet exist, in numerous cases the circulation of vehicles (which were still very rare) took place freely, without the need for authorizations and licenses. For example, in the United States the first traffic permits were only issued in 1899, even though cars had already been on the road for some years.
As time passed, the number of vehicles in circulation increased and in many countries the institutions made the driving license compulsory and introduced precise rules for obtaining it, providing that, to obtain it, it was necessary to take a specific exam to demonstrate the ability to control a vehicle.
The driving license in Italy
In Italy the first driving permits were issued in 1898. The pioneer was the municipality of Milan, which in that year promulgated a “Regulation for the circulation of motor vehicles”, introducing the obligation to have a driving license on city roads and establishing that it had to be issued by a special commission.
The “national” driving license was introduced three years later, in 1901, with Royal Decree nº 416 of 28 July, “Regulations for the circulation of automobiles on ordinary roads”. In article 12, the regulation established that anyone who wanted to drive a vehicle had to request the appropriate license from the prefect of the province of residence. To obtain the permit, the applicant had to pass a driving test at the Civil Engineering offices. In case of a positive outcome, a driving license was issued which, as today, had to always be carried with you while driving.
In the following decades, due to the increase in vehicles in circulation, new regulations were introduced. Among them, the obligation to have a license plate for each vehicle, the introduction of specific physical requirements for driving, the “pink sheet”, i.e. a temporary permit to practice together with an expert driver, and special licenses for driving public transport.
Post-World War II innovations and the European driving licence
After the Second World War, new international rules were signed to regulate the validity of the driving license outside the territory of the issuing State: the Geneva Convention of 1949 and the Vienna Convention of 1968 (which updated a previous agreement of 1926). These are the agreements still in force today for obtaining the international driving licence.
Furthermore, the rules have been updated in many countries. In Italy, among the various innovations, there was the new subdivision of the categories of driving licenses and the modification of the exam for obtaining them, which today, as we all know, requires not only the ability to drive, but also an in-depth knowledge of road traffic and related issues.
Since the 1990s, Italian legislation has had to adapt to the rules of the European Union. In fact, the European driving license was introduced in 1996: permits issued in EU member states are automatically valid throughout the Union. The legislation also changed the format of the driving license again, making the credit card model, currently in use, mandatory. The legislation came fully into force in 2013, but is constantly evolving.
