What's in your Driver License Barcode?

If you have a new Prince Edward Island driver license — the crazy all-digital ones with the tiny numbers beside each field — flip it over and you’ll see a barcode. Thanks to The SWIPE Toolkit it’s easy to find out what information is encoded in that barcode. For me, the “processed” version of the results came out like this:

Address=100 PRINCE ST
City=CHARLOTTETOWN
State=PE
Zipcode=C1A 4R4
Driver License Number=XXXXXX
License Expiration Date=MM/DD/YYYY
License Issued Date=MM/DD/YYYY
Date of Birth=MM/DD/YYYY
Sex=MALE
Address2=
Height=1'85"
Address Line 2=

There’s actually more information in there, which you only see if you look at the “raw bytes” tab in the Toolkit application; this Pennsylvania document can be of assistance in understanding what the fields mean. In there I see information like my name and eye colour that the Toolkit doesn’t parse.

The PDF417 format for the barcode used in Prince Edward Island is used many other places too, so if you live elsewhere you may be able to do this just as easily. It took me about 5 minutes from scan to decode, and worked on a Mac (it’s a Java application). Be sure to save your scanned image as a JPEG (I tried TIFF and it didn’t work).