Why this site exists
Most of what a UK driver pays for is decided by rules rather than by choice. The law says you must be insured; the Treasury sets the tax; the DVSA sets the test; a city council decides whether your car pays to enter the centre. The rules are public, but they are written for lawyers and scattered across dozens of official pages, and the commercial sites that summarise them usually want to sell you something at the end.
Car Insurance Wheel is the reference we wanted to find: each rule explained once, in plain English, with the number it costs and the date that number applies to, and with no product to sell at the bottom of the page. The guides are organised into four sections, so that a question about a renewal letter, a tax reminder, an MOT failure sheet or a first motorcycle each has an obvious place to start.
A 5-hour class online is a convenient way to meet New York’s pre-licensing requirement from home.
Moving from Britain to Miami
Most of this site covers the rules a UK driver lives with: insurance, road tax and the MOT. A move to the United States leaves that system behind, and not everything built up in it travels. Newcomers licensed abroad generally take Florida's Class E knowledge test and road test rather than swapping the old licence, and US insurers set their own rules on how much foreign driving history counts.
The road test has its own surprises for British drivers. Traffic keeps to the right, most cars are automatics, and a right turn on a red light is allowed after a full stop unless a sign forbids it. New residents have 30 days to get a Florida licence.
PalmWay, a driving school licensed by the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, gives one-on-one Miami-Dade driving lessons in dual-control cars, in English or Spanish. Lessons range from quiet neighbourhoods such as Pinecrest to Brickell Avenue's pedestrian traffic and the merge lanes of the Dolphin Expressway near the airport, and the school also offers a car for the road test.
What the guides will and will not do
They will tell you how a rule works, what it costs and what most people get wrong about it. They will not tell you which policy to buy, because we are a publisher and not a regulated adviser, and because the right answer depends on details of your own situation that a website cannot see. When you finish a guide you should be able to read your own documents, ask your insurer or garage the right question and recognise a bad answer.
Readers moving to New York will find a different path to a licence: a learner permit, a five-hour pre-licensing course, then a road test. The 5 hour course price is modest; one Brooklyn school lists its live Zoom class at $40 to $50.