German Drivers’ License Can Cost $1,000 : Motoring: Nation requires Americans to take expensive classes to get a license, even if they have a good driving record in the United States.

Want a German driver’s license? That will be $1,000 and 40 hours of schooling, please, even if you’ve been driving all your life.

Under a year-old law, Americans and citizens of most other countries must go to driving school and pass tests if they have lived in the country a year and want to continue driving.

Mary Weise said she was “just livid” to find that her 16 years of driving counted for nothing--that she not only had to enroll in driving school but had to take five hours of first-aid training.

An individual cannot even make an appointment for the written and road tests. The driving school does that, and its instructor must accompany the student in a school-owned car with dual controls.

“This driver’s license thing was about enough to make me move back to the States,” said Weise, of Denville, N.J. “It’s quite humiliating.”

It also is not the best way to attract foreign commerce.

“Impediments like this are real deterrents to doing business,” said Andrew Luedders of the American Chamber of Commerce in Frankfurt, which is trying get the United States included on the list of exempt countries.

The law was in large degree a response to a sudden influx of Eastern Europeans, too many of whom had phony licenses, according to German officials. Germany also has special driving rules and conditions, such as super-fast autobahns, and many road signs unfamiliar to Americans.

Under the old law, Weise and her husband, who works for an American TV network in Frankfurt, could have obtained German licenses simply by having their New Jersey permits translated, getting eye tests and paying nominal fees.

Under the new one, each spent $900 and 40 hours in a driving school and studying, she said.

“It’s definitely a scam,” said Denise St. Pierre of Montreal, whose husband, Gaetan Malo, plays professional hockey for the Berlin Prussians. She spent more than $1,200 getting her license.

Transport Ministry officials acknowledge that some unscrupulous driving schools take unwitting students for a ride.

“There are black sheep in the occupation who say that without 10 hours of behind-the-wheel schooling you can’t take the test,” said Annegret Killmann, a ministry spokeswoman. “That is not in the law, however.”

In response to telephone inquiries, representatives of several Berlin driving schools insisted that 10 hours of practice were necessary to take the test.

That was what St. Pierre was told. Although she has never had an accident, her instructor described her driving as “almost dangerous.”

St. Pierre failed her road test the first time. Retaking it cost another $180.

Many companies that employ foreigners pay the costs of their licenses, which add up to tens of thousands of dollars annually for a firm like Opel, a GM subsidiary based in Ruesselsheim, near Frankfurt.

“If you are from Switzerland or Italy, for example, you get your license automatically transcribed. Why not the Americans?” said Kurt Schnaebele, who helps Opel executives and their spouses get licenses.

Killmann of the Transport Ministry said the main problem is the lack of a uniform U.S. licensing standard--”requirements differ from state to state.”

For a license to be deemed transferable, she said, the requirements for it cannot differ significantly from those in Germany. Japan, one of 27 countries that won exemptions, qualified easily because its licenses are issued by a national agency.

U.S. officials have provided information the ministry requested on requirements in various states, and a decision on making American licenses transferable is expected by late summer.

One possible solution short of that, Killmann said, “is to extend the grace period to two years.”

That’s little comfort for most U.S. executives, who generally spend about three years in Germany.