Is British Columbia violating the 1949 Geneva Convention on Road Traffic by requiring foreign drivers to exchange their license within three months?
<p>According to the <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Geneva_Convention_on_Road_Traffic" rel="nofollow noreferrer">1949 Geneva Convention</a> citizens of any country that signed the agreement are able to drive in any other country for up to one year with an international driving permit:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>No Contracting State shall be required to extend the benefit of the provisions of this Convention to any motor vehicle or trailer, or to <strong>any driver having remained within its territory for a continuous period exceeding one year.</strong>  (Article 1, paragraph 2)</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>Each Contracting State <strong>shall allow any driver admitted to its territory who fulfils the conditions which are set out in Annex 8 and who holds a valid driving permit issued to him, after he has given proof of his competence, by the competent authority of another Contracting State or subdivision thereof, or by an Association duly empowered by such authority, to drive on its roads without further examination</strong> motor vehicles of the category or categories defined in Annexes 9 and 10 for which the permit has been issued.  (Article 24, paragraph 1)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The only requirement as set out in Annex 8 is...</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The minimum age for driving a motor vehicle under the conditions set out in Article 24 of the Convention shall be eighteen years.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But at the same time British Columbia (which is a member state of Canada, which is a party to the convention) <a href="http://www.quickscribe.bc.ca/secure/pdfs/110.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">requires foreign drivers to exchange their licenses within three months</a> of becoming a resident:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a person who has become ordinarily resident in British Columbia and who has a
validly issued and subsisting driver’s or operator’s licence or permit issued
according to the laws of the jurisdiction where he or she was most recently
ordinarily resident, for 90 days after he or she became ordinarily resident in
British Columbia;</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Isn't there a conflict between domestic and international law in this situation? Or am I misunderstanding the 1949 Geneva Convention?</p>

<p>My own answer to the question is <strong>yes, but not directly</strong>. As with many other laws it would take a court ruling to definitively spell out how international agreements are applicable to a given situation. Unfortunately it doesn't seem that such a court ruling was ever produced so far:</p>

<ul>
<li><p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Google Scholar</a> fails to list any US court cases relevant to the Convention on Road Traffic. The only somewhat relevant case is <a href="https://scholar.google.ca/scholar_case?case=16410084149983965777&amp;q=&quot;Convention+on+Road+Traffic&quot;&amp;hl=en&amp;as_sdt=ffffffffffffe04" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Busby v. State</a> in which the court rules that one cannot drive in Alaska with an IDP after having been previously restricted from driving in Alaska. The court does stress out that:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p><strong>The Convention does forbid a signatory country (or subsidiary state) from imposing or enforcing license revocations in a manner that discriminates against residents of other signatory countries.</strong> But Busby does not claim that he was the victim of such discrimination. Busby's license was revoked for conduct that would have led to license revocation if committed by an Alaska resident. (Indeed, Busby's license was revoked while he was an Alaska resident.) And Busby does not claim that he was singled out for prosecution because he was a resident of a foreign country—i.e., that the State would not have charged him with the offense of driving with a revoked license if he had still been an Alaska resident.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>This could possibly mean that the court believes that the Convention only applies to foreign residents, but its not spelled out specifically.</p></li>
<li><p>Searching for Canadian court cases <a href="https://www.canlii.org/en/#search/type=decision&amp;text=%22convention%20on%20road%20traffic%22" rel="nofollow noreferrer">likewise doesn't turn up anything useful</a>. The only relevant case is <a href="https://www.canlii.org/en/on/oncj/doc/2015/2015oncj205/2015oncj205.html?searchUrlHash=AAAAAQAcImNvbnZlbnRpb24gb24gcm9hZCB0cmFmZmljIgAAAAAB&amp;resultIndex=1" rel="nofollow noreferrer">R. v. Lawend</a> where the person in question was trying to drive in Ontario on a foreign license after previously having had their Ontario license suspended. Here the court rules similar to the decision in Alaska in that having a foreign license does not allow one to circumvent locally imposed license restrictions.</p></li>
<li><p>Searching for UK case law <a href="http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/lucy_search_1.cgi?sort=rank&amp;method=boolean&amp;highlight=1&amp;datehigh=&amp;mask_path=/eu/cases%20/ew/cases%20/ie/cases%20/nie/cases%20/scot/cases%20/uk/cases&amp;datelow=&amp;query=(%22Convention%20on%20Road%20Traffic%22)" rel="nofollow noreferrer">doesn't turn up any relevant court cases</a>.</p></li>
<li>Australian case law is <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinosrch.cgi?mask_path=&amp;method=auto&amp;query=%22convention+on+road+traffic%22" rel="nofollow noreferrer">likewise mute on the subject</a>.</li>
</ul>

<p>There is also a relevant legal opinion by the Department of State quoted in the <a href="https://2009-2017.state.gov/documents/organization/139638.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Digest of United States practice in International Law, 2002</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Reading these provisions as a whole, we believe that the State
  of Georgia, consistent with the CRT, </p>
  
  <p>(1) must permit an alien to
  drive in Georgia using a foreign driver’s license issued by a country
  party to the CRT only if the alien has been lawfully admitted to
  the United States; </p>
  
  <p>(2) <strong>must permit a lawfully admitted alien to drive
  in Georgia using a foreign driver’s license of a CRT party only
  during the first year after the alien’s admission</strong>; and </p>
  
  <p>(3) may, in
  accordance with Georgia’s residency laws, require an alien resident
  in Georgia to obtain a Georgia driver’s license as a condition for
  continued authorization to drive. By the same token, nothing in
  the CRT would prevent the State of Georgia from applying more
  liberal rules with respect to the driving privileges of aliens.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>In <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2303904" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Automated Vehicles Are Probably Legal in the United States, 2014</a> the author further analyses how the 1949 Geneva Convention is applicable within the United States. First, to settle the definition of "international traffic":</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Nonetheless, the United States ultimately accepted that “the purpose
  of chapter II was to establish, in effect, an international code of minimum
  safety requirements. By indirection, the rules of the road set
  forth in the convention <strong>would apply to the pattern of domestic as well
  as to international traffic</strong>.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The author the meaning behind Article I of the Convention:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Article 1 states in part that no party “shall be required to extend the benefit of the provisions of this Convention to any motor vehicle or trailer, or to any driver
  having remained within its territory for a continuous period exceeding
  one year.” </p>
  
  <p>This provision, on its face, indicates that the parties recognized
  that the treaty would benefit individuals. In no way does this
  recognition compel a conclusion that the Convention is self-executing,
  but <strong>it does suggest that the treaty is of a type that the Senate might
  have understood to be directly enforceable.</strong></p>
</blockquote>

<p>And finally on the issue of whether or not the treaty is "self-executing":</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>For these reasons, it is likely that courts will continue to treat the Geneva Convention as self-executing. Nonetheless, a court might conclude
  that, with respect to section II’s rules of the road, the governmental obligation is merely to “take appropriate measures”
  and that such an obligation is too vague to be enforced judicially.</p>
</blockquote>

<hr>

<p>So it seems absolutely clear that the Convention intended for participating countries to allow foreign drivers to drive abroad for up to one year. However international treaties <a href="http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/treaty-making-power/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">are not self-executing by default in Canada</a>, unlike the US:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Canada is bound by the terms of treaties that it enters into and breach thereof may give rise to international claims. However, in Canada treaties are not self-executing; they do not constitute part of the law of the land merely by virtue of their conclusion.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>So even though British Columbia is violating the 1949 Geneva Convention one cannot directly rely on said international agreement to enforce their rights. But another state party could theorethically sue Canada on behalf of its citizen to request that Canada rectifies its laws with accordance to the agreement.</p>

canada international driving