Ray said:
> Easy, Denise, easy. The CA DMV may be evil incarnate, but if someone
> *else* decides to opt for freedom and happiness by driving without
> insurance, and seriously injures me or someone I love, then *I* may have
> to bankrupt myself to pay for the accident. That's the epitome of
> unfairness. If you can devise a way to prevent that, while scrupulously
> being fair to everyone, at reasonable cost to the taxpayer, then I
> will vote for you to lead the VT DMV.
Let's recap: Reporting an accident to the police and reporting it to the
CA DMV are two different things. Felix has _not_ filed a police report.
The Palo Alto Police Dept was blowing him off by giving him the DMV form.
Without witnesses and without a police report filed at the time of the
accident, none of his evidence proves that he didn't back into her. If
she doesn't admit to having caused the accident and doesn't voluntarily pay
him, he or his insurance company will have to sue her. Having turned her
into the DMV has no effect on this.
Now that Felix has reported the accident to the DMV, he's lost his
bargaining chip with her. As soon as she finds out that he's already
turned her into the DMV, she has no reason to pay for the damage she did.
Remember, the DMV doesn't care if she pays him or not.
When the DMV finds her guilty of driving without a license, she'll be able
to buy a restricted license for $250. This license entitles her to drive
to and from work. I'm told that the trick is to join Amway and carry fliers
at all times. Then, if the person is stopped during their year of
restriction, they claim that their job is to distribute Amway fliers and
that this is what they were going to do at the time they were stopped. This
has held up in court. So a restricted license is no restriction at all.
The DMV doesn't stop people who drive without insurance from driving, it
merely makes $250 off the deal.
None of this benefits Felix at all. He now has an accident on his DMV
record. And yes, it goes on his record even though he wasn't at fault. The
DMV will never hear whose insurance paid for the damage and therefore who
was at fault and they don't care. I forget how many points an accident or a
ticket is, but if someone gets a certain number of points in a certain amount
of time, they lose their license. If Felix now gets a ticket, _he_ could
lose his license for a year.
> You have let your anger at the DMV get the better of you, I think. I've
> grown to enjoy your musings and mechanical advice, and don't want to read
> that a California woman has barricaded herself in a mountain retreat, is
> rumored to have several MG 1100's converted to armored personnel carriers,
> and is surrounded by well-armed DMV agents who have orders to shoot at
> anything that is octagonal.
Luckily, I'm not octagonal. I'm not likely to go that far, but I will
always stand up for what I think is right and refuse to be part of what I
believe to be wrong. There's an unhealthy tendency in this country towards
legal vindictiveness. We want the government to completely protect us from
all the "bad" guys. But do you really trust this government to know who's
good and who's bad? In Felix's case, we know all the facts and we know that
he's in the right, but does that mean that we really want the woman who hit
him to have her rights taken away? It could be you next time.
Think about this. You could call up someone's insurance company and cancel
their policy without their knowledge. Call up your insurance company and see
how much information they require from you before believing that it's you
calling them and think about whether you could get that much information about
someone you don't like. The way the system runs, you could file a DMV report
for an accident that never happened and claim that the person whose insurance
you cancelled was involved in the accident. The DMV will never require proof
that the accident happened. If your victim can't prove that they had
insurance when the alleged accident happened, they'll lose their license for
a year. Is this right? Is a system in which this could happen fair?
Somebody-or-other wise and famous once said, "Better that a hundred guilty
men go free than one innocent man be convicted." If you don't believe that
and aren't willing to stand up for it, then you'll have no right to complain
when _you're_ that one innocent man.
Thanks for listening again.
Denise Thorpe
thorpe@kegs.saic.com
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