Driving in Dubai as an Indian Tourist: IDP, Child Seat Law, Salik and Parking

Your Indian licence alone is not enough, and the permit that fixes it comes with a limit almost nobody mentions.

Two RTA service pages answer this between them, and you need both.

The first sets the rule for a visitor driving on a home licence. Answering a question about GCC licence holders, the RTA states: “You can drive in Dubai only if you’re on a visit visa and have a Driving Licence from a GCC or exception country.” That page names 20 exception countries and a longer list of countries eligible to exchange a licence. India appears on neither, and India does not appear on the Ministry of Interior’s Markhoos recognition and exchange lists either. So an Indian licence on its own does not put you behind the wheel here.

The second page, the RTA’s own International Driving Licence service, answers the question that follows. “Can I drive in Dubai with my International Driving Licence issued abroad?” The RTA’s answer: “Yes, but only if you’re on a visit visa, and you can only use it to drive a light vehicle or a motorcycle.”

Read the second half of that sentence, because it is the half that gets dropped everywhere else. The permission is conditional on the visa and restricted by vehicle class. It covers a light vehicle, which is the ordinary car a family rents, and a motorcycle. It does not reach past that. If your plan involves anything heavier, a minibus for a large group being the obvious case, ask the RTA before you book rather than at the depot.

The RTA answers the transit visa case separately: “Yes, but only if you have a valid International Driving Licence and an approval from your insurance company.” If you are stopping over rather than visiting, that insurance approval is an extra step with a lead time.

One seam worth knowing about, since you may read the same pages. The exception-country answer on the first page sits under a question that itself raises an international driving licence, and it answers with the GCC rule rather than the permit rule. The permit rule lives on the second page. That is why this section quotes both, and why an article that reads only the first page reaches a harsher conclusion than the RTA does.

So the sequence is settled, and it starts in India. Your regional transport office issues the International Driving Permit before you leave, and no counter in Dubai issues one to you. Carry it with your Indian licence, not instead of it.

Two things to check close to travel rather than taking from this page. These lists are maintained and countries get added, so look at the RTA’s exception list yourself. And ask your rental company, in writing, that its insurance answers to an Indian licence with an IDP behind it, because the RTA’s permission to drive and an insurer’s willingness to cover you are two different questions and only the first is settled above.

What a rental desk will ask for

Four things, and the last one surprises people.

Your passport. Your valid tourist visa. Your home licence together with the International Driving Permit, which count as one item because neither works without the other. And a credit card in the driver’s name.

That last one is not negotiable at most companies and it is not a debit card. The card is there for the security deposit and for anything that settles after you have gone, which is the part of car rental that costs families money and which the next section is about. If your travel money is sitting on a forex card rather than a credit card, settle that before you reach the counter, because which plastic a rental deposit will actually sit on decides whether you drive away at all.

Rental policies vary between companies, so confirm the requirements with the specific company before you fly rather than at the counter. That is dull advice and it is the advice the industry itself gives.

Insurance. The UAE regulator prescribes the wording of third-party motor cover rather than leaving it to each insurer: the Unified Motor Vehicle Insurance Policy Against Third Party Liability, issued under Insurance Authority Board of Directors’ Decision No. 25 of 2016 and effective Jan. 1, 2017, now sits in the Central Bank rulebook. What that means for you is that the third-party layer on a UAE rental follows a standard policy rather than the rental company’s own drafting. This page has not verified from a primary source that every rental vehicle must carry it, so treat it as the floor you confirm rather than the floor you assume, and confirm it as a named line on your own rental agreement. Third-party covers damage you cause to others. It does not cover the car you are sitting in, and the gap between that floor and what a family assumes it has bought is where a bad week becomes an expensive one. Ask what the excess is, in dirhams, and ask what happens to it if the damage is single-vehicle.

If you have an accident

Short, because the parts a page can responsibly give you are short.

The UAE government portal, on road accidents, tells you to call the police on 999, give your location and wait for their instructions. What happens next depends on injuries. Where nobody is hurt and the damage is minor, the portal says “you can move your car to the shoulder lane to avoid blocking traffic” and to stand “a minimum distance of 15 metres away from your car”. Where anybody is injured, the portal says “leave all vehicles exactly where they are, and wait for an ambulance to arrive.”

Then tell the rental company, before you drive the car again. A police report is the document the insurance side of this runs on, exactly as it is for a lost passport, and a family that settles a scrape privately at the roadside has an excess claim with no report behind it.

This page publishes nothing about fault, report colours or repair authorisation. The police assign fault and the insurer authorises repairs, and neither of those decisions belongs to a travel page.

The charges that arrive after you have flown home

This is the real reason renting in Dubai catches Indian families out, and it has nothing to do with the daily rate.

Tolls and traffic fines do not settle at the desk when you hand back the keys. They arrive later, against the card on file, and most companies add an administrative charge per item on top of the amount itself. Those administrative charges are set by the company rather than by any authority, and no authority publishes them.

So the question to ask before signing is not “what does it cost per day”. It is “what is your administrative charge per toll and per fine, and how long after I return the car can you keep charging this card?” Get the answer in writing. A company that will not put it in writing has told you something.

The fines themselves are a separate matter from the company’s charge for handling them, and they attach to conduct rather than to paperwork. Which everyday behaviour carries a penalty in the UAE covers the wider picture, where the parts that catch visitors out happen with a phone rather than at a wheel.

The toll system itself is Salik, and it is invisible by design: no barrier, no ticket, nothing you would notice. A family crossing the city several times in a day can pass a run of gates without registering any of them. This page publishes no gate count and no tariff, because Salik publishes both and they change. The tariff, the peak and off-peak bands, the free hours and the way the bands shift during Ramadan are set out in where a family’s money quietly leaks on a Dubai trip, along with what the rental company does about them.

The child seat law, which is stricter than most families assume

This is the section to read even if you never rent a car, because it applies in a taxi too.

One point of law first, because it decides how much weight these figures carry. Federal Decree-Law No. 14 of 2024 on Traffic Regulation came into force on March 29, 2025. The UAE government portal’s road safety page, last updated Dec. 23, 2025, states that “the UAE applies Federal Decree-Law No. (14) of 2024 On Traffic Regulation and the related executive regulations”, and the same portal continues to list Ministerial Resolution No. 178 of 2017 among the instruments setting these rules. So the 2017 resolution has not been quietly superseded on this subject. It sits under the newer federal law, and the government’s own platform still publishes the child and seat belt rules in the terms below. Three of them matter to a family.

A child up to 4 years of age must be provided with a child safety seat. The penalty is AED 400 and four black points.

The portal’s wording is that a front seat passenger “should also be at least 145 cm tall and not younger than 10 years old.” Both conditions, not either. A tall 9-year-old does not qualify on age. A short 12-year-old does not qualify on height.

Every passenger must wear a seat belt, including in the rear. Failure means AED 400 and four black points, and the portal is specific that it is the driver who is fined.

That last point reorders the responsibility. In a rental car the driver is you. In a taxi the driver is the driver, which sounds like somebody else’s problem until you consider that a driver may decline the fare, or ask your 10-year-old out of the front seat mid-journey, and that a family standing on a kerb at 11 p.m. has a problem regardless of whose fine it technically is. How that plays out ride by ride is set out in what a Dubai taxi will and will not do with a small child aboard.

The practical consequence for a family with a child under 4: the requirement follows the child, not the vehicle, so it applies to every journey, including the one from the airport. Whether an ordinary Dubai street taxi will have a seat for you is a separate question, and no operator page verified here states that one is carried as standard or available on demand. Do not build a journey on the assumption that one appears. Decide before you land whether you are hiring a seat, bringing your own or building an itinerary that does not need either. What that looks like day to day, including the pram and the airport transfer, is covered in moving a child under three around this city.

Should a family rent at all

Honest answer: often not, and the reasons are specific rather than general.

Renting makes sense when your itinerary includes places public transport does not reach, when you are travelling with grandparents for whom every transfer is an effort, when the group is large enough that taxis multiply badly or when you are leaving the city.

Renting makes less sense than people assume inside Dubai itself, because the attractions cluster, the Metro reaches many of them, taxis are plentiful and parking at the busiest places is its own project. Budget for paid parking as a line of its own: Dubai’s public parking is zoned and metered, with different tariffs and different free hours by zone and by day. This page publishes no rate, because the RTA sets them by zone and revises them. Check the zone number on the sign, or the RTA’s own app, before you assume a bay is free. Add the child seat requirement, the tolls that settle later, the administrative charges and the deposit hold on your card, and the arithmetic often turns.

The comparison worth running before you decide is not rental against taxi for a single journey. It is how each option is charged across a week for your actual group size, and how a car and the train are charged once the group is large sets out the published fares and names the figures nobody publishes. Do that first, and rent only if the answer says so.

If the deciding factor is reaching the attractions rather than the driving itself, the question is which ones the network actually reaches and how far the walk is at the other end. Which attractions the Metro actually puts you next to names them station by station, which is the list to work from rather than an impression.

Two conditions that change the calculation

Heat. A car removes the walk between an air-conditioned building and an air-conditioned vehicle, which is the part of a June to September day that wears a family down. That is a real argument for renting in the hot months, and it is not an argument that applies in January. The months when a transfer on foot stops being reasonable are set out in when a June afternoon makes a short transfer unreasonable.

Ramadan. The hour before sunset concentrates a city’s movement into one fixed minute, because everyone fasting is trying to be somewhere before it. Driving through that is the worst version of the experience. Being a passenger in it is merely tedious. What that does to a day, and the quiet window immediately afterwards, is in how a Ramadan day is shaped.

What this page will not tell you

No speed limits, and no fine or black point figure for any offence other than the two on this page. Those two are here because they are the offences that attach to child passengers, which is what this page is about, and because a parent needs to know the requirement is enforced rather than advisory. Everything else in the UAE penalty schedule is extensive and it varies, and an incomplete extract of it would read as the whole. The Ministry of Interior and the RTA publish the full schedule.

No rental company names, daily rates, deposit amounts or administrative charges. None was verified here, and the administrative charges in particular are set by each company and published by nobody.

No parking tariffs, zones or free hours. The RTA publishes them and they vary by zone and by day.

No answer for anything heavier than a light vehicle or a motorcycle. That is where the RTA’s own answer stops. A large group hiring a minibus should ask the RTA rather than read this page.

No guidance on driving in Abu Dhabi or the other emirates, whose enforcement and toll systems differ.

Before you decide

In India: get the International Driving Permit from your RTO, and carry it with your Indian licence rather than instead of it.

Before you book: ask the rental company, in writing, whether its insurance answers to an Indian licence with an IDP behind it, and ask the RTA directly if your vehicle is anything heavier than an ordinary car. Then ask the company’s administrative charge per toll and per fine, and how long after return it may charge the card. Also in writing.

Before you land: settle the car seat question for any child under 4, for every journey including the airport transfer.

Before you commit: run the week-long comparison against Metro and taxi for your actual group size, rather than assuming a car is cheaper.

If the answer is that you would rather not manage tolls, deposits, seats and a card that stays chargeable for weeks after you leave, that is a legitimate conclusion, and our Dubai family itineraries with the transport arranged are built around it. That is a convenience, not a saving, and it would be dishonest to sell it as the cheaper option.

Apply this page’s own test to us as well. Ask Trekhops, in writing, which transfers a package covers, whether a child seat is included and for which ages, and what happens to the price if you add an airport transfer at 2 a.m. If we will not put an answer in writing, that has told you something too.