First; the formal employee drove without a license for 1-2 months in Puerto Rico. We taught her to drive, which she was excited about. You might think this is a substantial legal risk, but basically it isn’t, as you can see here, the general range of fines for issues around not-having-a-license in Puerto Rico is in the range of $25 to $500, which just isn’t that bad.
I have no knowledge specific to Puerto Rico, but my understanding is that by far the most important risk incurred when driving without a license is that an unlicensed driver will also almost certainly be uninsured or be in violation of the terms of their insurance such that their insurance will decline claims related to unlicensed driving they were doing, and therefore that an unlicensed driver would potentially be liable for extraordinary sums of money if they were to get into an accident for which they were at fault. Was this person insured? Did the car insurance policy allow unlicensed drivers? What would have happened if there had been an at-fault car accident with another driver?
I initially upvoted/delta’d/insightful’d this, but on looking into it further I don’t think that this concern can possibly be right. You mention “extraordinary sums of money”, but Puerto Rico only requires $3,000 dollars of liability insurance; the default liability insurance wouldn’t be relevant if “extraordinary sums of money” are involved. It’s possible that Nonlinear had better insurance for their car; but I feel like the concern here should be about them pressuring their employee to break the law, while your comment’s proposed harms would be almost equally bad if everything were legal but Nonlinear didn’t have good supplemental insurance. (In particular, your comment seems to imply that it’s significantly immortal/problematic for anybody to drive in Puerto Rico without additional insurance.)
(Regardless, I think it’s important to note that, even after receiving Nonlinear’s comments, the original post gives driving without a license as an example of something that “could have had severe personal downsides such as jail time in a foreign country”; that’s what they were presumably responding to.)
Just to clarify, from a quick Google, apparently it’s “common” for liability insurance in Puerto Rico to cover up to $300,000 for bodily injury. However, you rightfully point out it’s not legally required to have this much liability coverage.
Maybe this would be a good PSA: get good liability insurance with a lot of coverage in case you ever injure someone in a car crash!
Also—the whole point of getting a licence is to test that you can drive to a specific standard. Not just “my friends taught me how to drive so it’s fine”. The fact that the penalties for driving without a licence are small doesn’t make it good behaviour.
I have no knowledge specific to Puerto Rico, but my understanding is that by far the most important risk incurred when driving without a license is that an unlicensed driver will also almost certainly be uninsured or be in violation of the terms of their insurance such that their insurance will decline claims related to unlicensed driving they were doing, and therefore that an unlicensed driver would potentially be liable for extraordinary sums of money if they were to get into an accident for which they were at fault. Was this person insured? Did the car insurance policy allow unlicensed drivers? What would have happened if there had been an at-fault car accident with another driver?
I initially upvoted/delta’d/insightful’d this, but on looking into it further I don’t think that this concern can possibly be right. You mention “extraordinary sums of money”, but Puerto Rico only requires $3,000 dollars of liability insurance; the default liability insurance wouldn’t be relevant if “extraordinary sums of money” are involved. It’s possible that Nonlinear had better insurance for their car; but I feel like the concern here should be about them pressuring their employee to break the law, while your comment’s proposed harms would be almost equally bad if everything were legal but Nonlinear didn’t have good supplemental insurance. (In particular, your comment seems to imply that it’s significantly immortal/problematic for anybody to drive in Puerto Rico without additional insurance.)
(Regardless, I think it’s important to note that, even after receiving Nonlinear’s comments, the original post gives driving without a license as an example of something that “could have had severe personal downsides such as jail time in a foreign country”; that’s what they were presumably responding to.)
Just to clarify, from a quick Google, apparently it’s “common” for liability insurance in Puerto Rico to cover up to $300,000 for bodily injury. However, you rightfully point out it’s not legally required to have this much liability coverage.
Maybe this would be a good PSA: get good liability insurance with a lot of coverage in case you ever injure someone in a car crash!
If you crash and injure someone when driving without a license you’ll likely get a much stiffer punishment than if you did have a license.
Also—the whole point of getting a licence is to test that you can drive to a specific standard. Not just “my friends taught me how to drive so it’s fine”. The fact that the penalties for driving without a licence are small doesn’t make it good behaviour.