Driving in Morocco: the licence, the tolls and the checks

Morocco has spent twenty years building roads, and the result is a network where the road itself is rarely the problem. The motorways between the big cities are new, empty and cheap; the mountain roads are narrow, slow and unlit; and the last twenty kilometres to anywhere interesting is usually a single sealed strip with gravel shoulders that both directions use in turn.

What makes the country different to drive in is not the surface. It is the set of habits around you, and the way the rules are enforced: a checkpoint every so often, a speed trap in the shade of a tree, and a fine paid in cash before you drive on.

The paperwork, before you leave home

The licence question has a hard edge to it now. You need your own driving licence, and you need the 1968 version of the international driving permit with it. Morocco no longer accepts the 1949 version, and an international permit cannot be bought outside the country that issued your licence, so this is a thing to arrange at home rather than at the airport. Anyone staying longer than a year is expected to hold a Moroccan licence instead.

Then insurance. A green card from your insurer is the proof that the car carries at least the minimum cover Morocco requires, and the police may ask for it. Most European insurers cover Morocco and will issue the card on request, and if yours will not, there are booths in the port at Tangier that sell local cover on arrival. Carry all of it in the car: your licence and permit, the green card and the registration document, because at the border they are checked on the way out as well as on the way in.

The motorways, and what they cost

The toll network belongs to ADM, a state company, and it charges by distance through toll stations: 1,808 kilometres of paid motorway as of 2016, with a general speed limit of 120 km/h. The A1 runs from Rabat through Casablanca to Safi, the A2 goes east from Rabat to Fez and on towards Oujda, the A3 links Casablanca with Marrakesh and continues to Agadir, and the A5 runs north from Rabat to the port at Tangier Med.

For scale, a family car pays a little under 200 dirham in tolls across the whole run from Marrakesh to Tetouan, which is one of the longest drives on the network. Buses and lorries pay more. Take cash, keep small notes, and treat the toll as the smallest cost of the day.

The ordinary roads are the other half of the story. They are usually one narrow lane in each direction, and in the south a road marked as sealed is sometimes just a central strip one lane wide with wide shoulders that each direction uses when it meets oncoming traffic. That works well until windblown dust hides what is coming, at which point it does not.

Bringing your own car

A car arriving from Europe needs a temporary import form for customs, usually handed out on the ferry in the busy summer months and otherwise completed on arrival at Tangier. Everybody in the car also fills in an entry card, as at the airport, and both the police and customs will search the vehicle, often separately and often slowly.

The car may be brought in for six months in any one year. Leaving it in Morocco beyond that means paying import tax that can reach three times the value of the car, and the rule stands even if the car breaks down, so a breakdown late in a long stay is a conversation with customs rather than with the scrap dealer. Customs also records the registration on entry and will not let somebody else drive the car out of the country, which matters if two people are travelling and one flies home early.

Checkpoints, speed traps and the fine

Police checkpoints are frequent and not always explicable, and they can back a main road up for a kilometre. The stop sign they use is a red circle with قف, halte police and alto policia inside it rather than the octagonal red sign you are expecting. The simplest way through is to do what the car in front does, and if that is unclear, stop until somebody waves you on.

Speed checks are the more expensive version of the same thing. On the national and regional roads, expect a mobile trap roughly every 30 kilometres: two officers and a lidar, often standing in the shade on a long straight stretch, and often just before a speed limit rises rather than falls. Drivers warn each other by flashing their headlights, which is worth knowing in both directions. The penalty is a cash fine, paid at the roadside against a handwritten receipt. Fixed cameras are fewer and mostly on the motorways. The urban limit the police enforce hardest is 40 km/h, in towns and at the junctions where pedestrians cross.

Drink-driving is treated as an absolute. Any alcohol in your system means a fine and possibly a prison sentence, so the one glass of wine with dinner is a decision about the following morning, not the following hour.

Roundabouts, towns and the rules nobody keeps

Roundabouts in Morocco are the one thing to unlearn rather than learn. Some are configured so that traffic already on the roundabout gives way to vehicles entering it, and others follow the ordinary rule where the entering vehicle gives way. There is no way to tell which is which until you are in it, so the technique is to stay in the outer lane where you can, and to watch the car beside you rather than the sign. Police are sometimes posted at roundabouts to enforce the rule and, by the account of people who drive here, it makes little difference.

In the cities, lane markings are decoration. A two lane road is used as four, scooters weave through everything, and traffic lights are treated as advice. The general habit worth adopting is that anything larger than you takes priority: lorries, buses and the grand taxis, which drive as though the road belongs to them, because in a practical sense it often does.

After dark, and over the mountains

The advice that matters most is to finish the day before the light does. Light usage is erratic, some cars are parked on the blacktop rather than the shoulder, and pedestrians, bicycles and animals use the carriageway in the dark, frequently without anything reflective. On the mountain roads, snow and ice close passes in winter and early spring, and heavy rain brings flash floods across the road rather than under it.

Fuel needs planning outside the cities. Stations thin out badly in the countryside, and the roadside trade in contraband diesel is real enough that emptying the wrong jerrycan into a modern engine can end the trip. Filling at a busy station in a town is the safe habit, and if you are renting, ask the company where it fills its own cars. Most Shell stations take foreign cards, while many of the smaller brands are cash only, which is one more reason to keep dirhams in the car.

If something goes wrong

Morocco has one of the highest road accident rates in the region, and the procedure after a crash is fixed: both drivers complete a form, the constat amiable, and sign it. Blank forms are sold by tobacconists in every city and handed out at the insurance booths in Tangier port, so it is worth having one in the glovebox before you need it. Everything on it is easier to fill in at the roadside than to reconstruct later.

Two things about the aftermath are worth knowing in advance. If the accident is fatal and the authorities think you were responsible, you may be detained before a hearing. And the rule about the car leaving with the same driver is absolute: if you are not in the vehicle when it tries to cross back out, it stays in Morocco. A visa is only good for ninety days in any case, which is usually the shorter of the two deadlines.

Driving in Morocco rewards a certain temperament: unhurried in the towns, alert on the open road, and willing to stop for the night rather than press on into the dark. Do that, and the country opens up in a way the buses and trains cannot quite match. The road to a village in the Draa valley at seven in the morning, with nobody on it but you and a donkey, is a large part of why people come here at all.