If you’re ever bored whilst living in America, try filling your days getting car insurance.

In order to get car insurance you need two things:

    -A US driving licence

    -A car registered in the state you are living in

Now in order to get a US driving licence you have to

    a)Pass a three-part written test covering rules, signs and vision. Examples of questions asked include “what effect does the use of marijuana and amphetamine have on driving?” (possible answer: “depends on the quality of marijuana and amphetamine”) and “how should you react to a flashing red light?” (Maybe the same answer applies here?)

    b)Complete a driving test with a state trooper (who presumably shoots you if you don’t pass). You can’t do this bit until you pass the written test, and then you have to turn up early in the morning (recommendation 6:30am!) to wait for an appointment to take the driving test that day. If you fail you can retake the test the next day and repeat this again (a total of three times for one application fee, which is nice).

And in order to get your car registered you have to:

    a)Take your car for a safety test. Unlike the UK MOT, this does not seem (to me at least) to include testing your brakes, or thoroughly checking inside and under your car to ensure everything is sound.

    b)Take your test result and other bits of paper to the local Department of Motor Vehicles and get your plates (if you are registering for the first time and you bought your car out of state this can be quite expensive since you have to pay the state sales tax at this time).

Now at each stage of this process you will be asked for your social security number and there will be a period of shock and silence when you explain that you don’t have one. So really, you need that too unless you are one of the people here who like to point out that there is no legal requirement to have one (which seems to be true), and go to great lengths to avoid having one. Good luck to them. If our experience of trying to buy basic services like telephone and TV is anything to go by they will be spending a lot of their waking hours arguing (usually without success) with shop assistants and call centres.

Despite the complexity of other elements of daily life, the process of applying for a social security number is thankfully quite simple and only involves waiting a few hours in a building with the previous and future residents of the local county jail (don’t start up any conversations to while away the hours).

For those interested in history, the lowest US social security number (001-01-0001) was issued to Grace Owen of Concord, New Hampshire in 1936. This wasn’t the first social security number to be issued in the US though, this was 055-09-0001 which was issued to John Sweeney, Jr of New York, also in 1936. Now despite the purpose of social security being to help people in their old age Mr Sweeney died in 1974 aged 61 without ever having received any benefits from the programme.