More DMV madness
Jul. 2nd, 2003 11:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
plutherusI don't know what it is. I apparently have pissed off some traffic gods at some time, because I've had so many problems with the DMV in both Oregon and California that I pretty much expect to have problems whenever I go in for any reason. It's gotten to the point where I'm shocked if I can go in and conduct even a simple transaction such as renewing vehicle registration without a major hassle.
So I'm not even surprised, just pissed off, about
Since I'm now living in Oregon, and plan to do so for at least the next couple of years, I went into the DMV today to get a driver's license.
OK, for the complete story, we must flash back to January 24, 2003. (This is the date according to the Josephine County Courthouse, but it was somewhere around there.) I was driving a car up to Portland to deliver it to a friend of mine. Shortly after passing Grants Pass, I was pulled over by officer Holly Bridges (her real name!) because my tail light was out. She ran my license, and came back and told me it was suspended. She let me off, however, with a warning, provided I promise not to drive anymore until I got it straightened out. She was very polite and helpful about the whole thing, at least to my face. She let me go up to the rest stop about a mile ahead, and stop and call my friends in Eugene to pick me up. Which I did, and they did (three witnesses! The two who came down, and the one who remembers them leaving to come get me in the middle of the night!) Since I was about to enter a car-free existence in San Francisco, not driving after that was no problem, so I didn't.
Two weeks later, in February of 2003, I went down to the California DMV to try to find out why my license was suspended. After two hours of being shuttled from line to line, I was finally told that there was no record of a suspension in California. (Along with various glares and huffiness. Yeah, lady, I did this on purpose. I can't think of a more fun way to kill a couple of hours during work than to head to the DMV and make up fake suspensions. Sheesh.)
OK, no problem, right? No suspension in California, not that it would matter too much as I wasn't planning on driving any time soon.
Back to the present: I go in to the DMV this morning to get an Oregon drivers license. They tell me that I can't because of a license suspension. I tell them that I had been told my license was suspended in California, but I had checked with the California DMV and they had no record of it. So they looked a little further, and told me it was my Oregon license, which I had six years ago, that had been suspended. Huh?? So, the guy tracks it down to the Josephine County Court, gives me a phone number and a docket number, tells me they'd have to clear it up before I get a license.
So thus begins the phone calls. Five phone numbers later, I finally piece together the following information:
Turns out it's not my Oregon license that's suspended, just my Oregon Driving Privileges. My California license is perfectly fine. I am perfectly legal to drive anywhere in the other 49 states, and all throughout Mexico and Canada.
Just not in Oregon.
Turns out they can actually suspend your driving privileges even if you're not licensed in that state. (Which, by the way, means that those spam messages you've received about getting an international drivers license to evade license suspensions are really just a scam. No huge surprise there, I guess.)
Now, the real question is why is my license suspended? Because I didn't show up in court. I didn't show up in court, because I was let go with a warning. However, the police officer who let me go with a warning filed a citation that I didn't know about. And, and here's the real fun part, the only way I can clear it up is to contact the police officer directly, and hope that she's kept good and accurate records, which she hopefully still has on file somewhere (apparently, it's up to each officer how to file their citations!) If her records show a citation, not a warning, I'm screwed.
I did finally manage to track her down (as the Oregon State Police in Grant's Pass), and left a message in her voicemail. If she intentionally filed a citation because she realized she was behind on her quota or something, I'm screwed. I can't get out of the citation unless I can prove that I didn't get it. As far as the information I could get today goes, if officer Holly Bridges is not an honest cop who will admit a mistake, or if she doesn't keep very good records, I will not be able to ever legally drive in Oregon. I don't know how much trust I can really place in her honesty when she lied about a suspension, then illegally filed a citation that she never gave me, which led to a suspension.
I cannot even begin to describe how pissed off I am at this kind of fuckup, and that there is, as far as I've been able to find out so far no mechanism in place to fix it.
Then again, I suppose, it's always possible, and maybe even more likely, that the people I talked to at the Josephine County court, the Sheriff's department, the Highway Patrol, and the State Police, didn't give me completely correct information, and the guy at the DMV was right and that it was my old Oregon license that was actually suspended.
Of course, that would lead me back to square 1 in finding out why it was suspended and how it can be fixed.
Fuck.
So I'm not even surprised, just pissed off, about
Since I'm now living in Oregon, and plan to do so for at least the next couple of years, I went into the DMV today to get a driver's license.
OK, for the complete story, we must flash back to January 24, 2003. (This is the date according to the Josephine County Courthouse, but it was somewhere around there.) I was driving a car up to Portland to deliver it to a friend of mine. Shortly after passing Grants Pass, I was pulled over by officer Holly Bridges (her real name!) because my tail light was out. She ran my license, and came back and told me it was suspended. She let me off, however, with a warning, provided I promise not to drive anymore until I got it straightened out. She was very polite and helpful about the whole thing, at least to my face. She let me go up to the rest stop about a mile ahead, and stop and call my friends in Eugene to pick me up. Which I did, and they did (three witnesses! The two who came down, and the one who remembers them leaving to come get me in the middle of the night!) Since I was about to enter a car-free existence in San Francisco, not driving after that was no problem, so I didn't.
Two weeks later, in February of 2003, I went down to the California DMV to try to find out why my license was suspended. After two hours of being shuttled from line to line, I was finally told that there was no record of a suspension in California. (Along with various glares and huffiness. Yeah, lady, I did this on purpose. I can't think of a more fun way to kill a couple of hours during work than to head to the DMV and make up fake suspensions. Sheesh.)
OK, no problem, right? No suspension in California, not that it would matter too much as I wasn't planning on driving any time soon.
Back to the present: I go in to the DMV this morning to get an Oregon drivers license. They tell me that I can't because of a license suspension. I tell them that I had been told my license was suspended in California, but I had checked with the California DMV and they had no record of it. So they looked a little further, and told me it was my Oregon license, which I had six years ago, that had been suspended. Huh?? So, the guy tracks it down to the Josephine County Court, gives me a phone number and a docket number, tells me they'd have to clear it up before I get a license.
So thus begins the phone calls. Five phone numbers later, I finally piece together the following information:
Turns out it's not my Oregon license that's suspended, just my Oregon Driving Privileges. My California license is perfectly fine. I am perfectly legal to drive anywhere in the other 49 states, and all throughout Mexico and Canada.
Just not in Oregon.
Turns out they can actually suspend your driving privileges even if you're not licensed in that state. (Which, by the way, means that those spam messages you've received about getting an international drivers license to evade license suspensions are really just a scam. No huge surprise there, I guess.)
Now, the real question is why is my license suspended? Because I didn't show up in court. I didn't show up in court, because I was let go with a warning. However, the police officer who let me go with a warning filed a citation that I didn't know about. And, and here's the real fun part, the only way I can clear it up is to contact the police officer directly, and hope that she's kept good and accurate records, which she hopefully still has on file somewhere (apparently, it's up to each officer how to file their citations!) If her records show a citation, not a warning, I'm screwed.
I did finally manage to track her down (as the Oregon State Police in Grant's Pass), and left a message in her voicemail. If she intentionally filed a citation because she realized she was behind on her quota or something, I'm screwed. I can't get out of the citation unless I can prove that I didn't get it. As far as the information I could get today goes, if officer Holly Bridges is not an honest cop who will admit a mistake, or if she doesn't keep very good records, I will not be able to ever legally drive in Oregon. I don't know how much trust I can really place in her honesty when she lied about a suspension, then illegally filed a citation that she never gave me, which led to a suspension.
I cannot even begin to describe how pissed off I am at this kind of fuckup, and that there is, as far as I've been able to find out so far no mechanism in place to fix it.
Then again, I suppose, it's always possible, and maybe even more likely, that the people I talked to at the Josephine County court, the Sheriff's department, the Highway Patrol, and the State Police, didn't give me completely correct information, and the guy at the DMV was right and that it was my old Oregon license that was actually suspended.
Of course, that would lead me back to square 1 in finding out why it was suspended and how it can be fixed.
Fuck.
