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Hah! The same thing can happen in Washington! I was pulled over for something, actually it might just have been this. "Your license isn't valid." What? Why is

Hah! The same thing can happen in Washington! I was pulled over for something, actually it might just have been this. "Your license isn't valid." What? Why is it suspended? "It's not suspended, it's just not valid." What the hell does that mean? "You'll have to talk to the DOL. And you can't drive your vehicle from here." I'm meant to be working the next night, so I need to figure this out. Go to the DOL's website. It literally says my license is valid, in bold green letters. Huh. For fun, I click on "Pay any amounts owed (citations, infractions, etc.)". "There are no amounts owed on your license." I take print outs of both of these, and am at the DOL when it opens the next morning. Similar to you. I paid, in person, by check, a fine a few years prior. Because it wasn't "processed" til after midnight, my license was suspended, but unsuspended the same (next) day. But (and I'm not sure how this is justified) there was a fee attached to removing the suspension (that I didn't know about), so my license was "invalidated". To their credit, at least, the lady at the DOL was very sympathetic. She stamped all my print outs with a DOL stamp, and then all the print outs of the process to revalidate my license (to try to support my case, that there was no way I could have known this, as the DOL's own website tells me my license is valid and is not subject to any restriction). Went to court to contest the "driving without a valid license". Still took me 20 minutes of repeating, several times over, to the prosecutor this whole flow, the first fifteen minutes of which he was insistent that none of my paperwork mattered because "they would have sent you a letter, so you must have known", before finally capitulating and dropping it.

hansvm 3y ago
> they would have sent you a letter They're pretty bad at that step. They'll swear up and down it was sent, but questions like "to where" and "was it the same address I have on my driver's license," or "do you have the slightest shred of evidence" are met with deaf ears. I had the damnedest time once explaining to the clerk why it mattered that the signature she was looking at wasn't my name, wasn't my handwriting, wasn't attached to a document with my name, and wasn't dated within a year of any ticket associated with my license. Her entire algorithm was (document_in_file && ink_in_signature_box). It might be acceptable if you were at least entitled to a proper trial when they made blatant mistakes. The status quo causes problems though.

hansvm 3y ago

> they would have sent you a letter They're pretty bad at that step. They'll swear up and down it was sent, but questions like "to where" and "was it the same address I have on my driver's license," or "do you have the slightest shred of evidence" are met with deaf ears. I had the damnedest time once explaining to the clerk why it mattered that the signature she was looking at wasn't my name, wasn't my handwriting, wasn't attached to a document with my name, and wasn't dated within a year of any ticket associated with my license. Her entire algorithm was (document_in_file && ink_in_signature_box). It might be acceptable if you were at least entitled to a proper trial when they made blatant mistakes. The status quo causes problems though.