I had previously said very clearly that it depends on the laws in each state and how the law on the books defines the words, but you chose to ignore that, and leave that out of your quote of me.
“Operate” may be a much broader word than “drive” and therefore may have broader implications under law in some states. This was explained to us in high school driver’s education by a California Highway Patrolman under the discussion of “reciprocal” nature of state licensure. The question was “Why do the states honor the licenses of all the other states?” One point the Patrolman brought up was that some states’ licenses say, “OPERATOR LICENSE,” while others say, “DRIVER LICENSE.” There is a difference.
My wife just pulled out her Indiana license and it uses BOTH words: “INIDIANA OPERATOR DRIVER LICENSE.” If the two two words were synonymous, there would be no need to use both. Indiana evidently decided to cover all the implications. Her previous license said, “INDIANA DRIVERS LICENSE” and then the word “OPERATOR” was typed in, in another section, upon issue.
And we know it was was legitimately issued by a highly intelligent bureaucrat by the spelling...