Brazil for Canadian Drivers — From 0.08 to Zero, and an IDP You Must Carry

The gap that catches Canadians off guard in Brazil is not on the road — it is at the dinner table. At home you have an 0.08 limit and the unspoken latitude of a drink with a meal. Brazil’s Lei Seca removes that entirely: the legal threshold is effectively zero, and the law is enforced with roadside blitzes where officers breath-test whole lines of cars. A reading at all means a heavy fine and licence suspension; a higher one can mean a night in custody. Plan your evenings so the person driving has had nothing, full stop.

The other must-do is the permit. Brazil requires foreign visitors to carry an International Driving Permit with the national licence, so pick one up from CAA before you leave — it cannot be obtained once you arrive, and rental companies will ask for it. Your home licence on its own is not sufficient.

After those two, the driving fundamentals are familiar. Brazil keeps to the right, the same as Canada, so there is no side to relearn. Speeds run 60 km/h in towns, 80 on rural roads and 110 on motorways — a notch higher than the 100 you may be used to, but the toll motorways are genuinely good and worth the cost. The frustration is everything else: city driving is assertive, rural surfaces deteriorate quickly off the main routes, and lane discipline is loose. Speed cameras, both fixed and mobile, are everywhere on urban arterials; a 10 km/h overshoot is about BRL 130 (≈ €22) plus four licence points.

Fuel is cheap at roughly $1.15/litre, and the emergency number is 190 for police (192 ambulance, 193 fire). Read the full rules on our Brazil driving guide, confirm the IDP requirement with the Driving Permit Checker, and check how the alcohol penalties stack up against other countries in who pays your driving fines abroad. Keep cash in the car for tolls outside the big-city electronic lanes.