I wouldn’t name it an atmospheric river, as a result of these come and go. DMV mail falls in a endless rain, with out regard to seasons.
Not that it’s all dangerous information from readers who, like good troopers, dutifully report each improvement from the entrance traces of the battle to resume their driver’s licenses.
Rosa Maria Juarez, 94, shared successful story. The Montebello resident, who assured me she’s a protected and conscientious driver, handed simply and supplied to educate me once I take the check later this 12 months.
Right here’s a professional tip from Juarez:
“They instructed me to go on a pc, however the computer systems are soiled. Persons are touching these computer systems. You possibly can see the smudges, the darkish spots. Like they by no means clear them.”
Juarez requested for a paper check as a substitute, sat down, and minutes later, BOOM! License renewed.
Culver Metropolis resident Parrish Hirasaki, 78, began to deliberate after listening to from so many associates who flunked the check. She studied the driving handbook with a highlighter, after which made a examine information — a grid with 9 columns of info about speeds (5 mph on ice), fines ($1,000 for dashing by a piece zone) and distances (15 toes or extra from a fireplace hydrant).
“Now I’ve bragging rights with my associates,” Hirasaki stated after acing the check on her first attempt. “And I’ve bragged quite a bit.”
The highway to renewal was a bit bumpier for June Meyers, who lives in Westwood. She adopted my suggestion to take the DMV’s fail-safe eLearning course on her dwelling pc. When you have driving file and qualify, eLearning is sort of a 45-minute driver ed course, with quizzes after every of seven sections. When you give the improper reply, no worries. You possibly can attempt once more till you get it proper.
However for Meyers, it was glitch after glitch, simply because it was for plenty of different readers.
“It crashed 3 times,” Meyers, 90, stated in a sassy letter to the DMV. She later took an in-person check after learning for per week, and like so many others, Meyers discovered a number of the inquiries to be “as obscure and ridiculous as potential.” She handed anyway, however simply barely.
I instructed Meyers I acquired a kick out of the final line of her DMV letter, by which she stated, “I don’t should return for 4 years. Optimistically I’ll be lifeless.”
As for the “obscure and ridiculous” questions, some readers complained that though the DMV had promised me it made an inventory of about two dozen inquiries to throw out — together with the aggressively absurd “what’s one other title for the hand-to-hand steering methodology?” — a few of them had been nonetheless on the check.
So what offers, DMV?
“These questions had been eliminated previously few days,” DMV Deputy Director Anita Gore assured me late final week.
Concerning glitches within the eLearning system, Gore stated Golden State readers had one thing to do with the tech crashes:
“Due to the eLearning publicity supplied partly by your column, the system was briefly overloaded, inflicting some customers to get error messages,” she stated. “Updates have been made to accommodate extra quantity.”
And efforts are persevering with, Gore stated, to direct extra drivers (of all ages) to the eLearning course, which focuses on protected driving reasonably than on memorizing the type of trivialities discovered on the written checks.
“Information is extra helpful than the power to take a written check,” stated Gore.
That jibes with one thing DMV director Steve Gordon instructed me in our final dialog.
“I don’t know if there’s any robust correlation between having the ability to go a written check and being a protected driver,” he stated.
I’m clearing my throat right here. OK, prepared?
These checks have been accountable for a long time of stress, household arguments, and untold dishonest makes an attempt and sleepless nights for teenagers, their dad and mom and everybody else who’s ever pushed.
And so they may need been a waste of time?
Truly, Gordon didn’t go that far, and there’s apparent worth to testing individuals on the principles of the highway (supplied the questions are related). However as a number of readers have instructed, the truest check of whether or not you’ve got any enterprise driving is a behind-the-wheel check, as a result of it’s potential to ace a written check and nonetheless be a menace within the driver’s seat.
However how might you get anybody to agree on an age — 70? 75? 80? — for obligatory driving checks?
And what politician would push the wanted laws, given the truth that older voters wish to vote?
As I’ve stated earlier than, good drivers are available all ages and so do dangerous drivers. However many people have seen our dad and mom refuse to give up the keys even when it’s apparent their imaginative and prescient, judgment and response time have slipped. (At the moment in California, about 90,000 behind-the-wheel checks are administered each month to first-time drivers and those that is likely to be having issues, together with older drivers).
Frank Cantor, who operates driving faculties that supply refresher programs to older drivers in California and several other different states, stated judgment and neck mobility are among the many challenges he sees. He introduced up one scholar specifically.
“I gave my mother a refresher and he or she ended up hitting a pedestrian and didn’t even understand it,” Cantor stated from Florida, the place he lives. “She was 75 and he or she was all the time a horrible driver. I taught her that when you can’t look over your shoulder, you’ve got the side-view mirrors, and when you lean ahead, you’ll catch the blind spot.”
That’s one other professional tip. Don’t overlook it.
After I requested Hirasaki, who devised the examine information, what she thought of obligatory behind-the wheel testing, her first phrases had been: “Oh, please, no.” However Meyers, who fired off that dart of a letter to the DMV, stated she would completely assist the concept.
And Juarez stands able to seize her keys and climb behind the wheel proper now for a driving check.
“I’d be glad to take it,” she stated. “I’m not afraid.”
So how precisely did Juarez go the written data check so simply?
She stated her daughter printed out 4 apply exams from the DMV web site. Juarez took each certainly one of them, then proceeded to the DMV workplace and centered on the duty in entrance of her, simply as she does when she’s behind the wheel.
“As I acquired older, I began studying that I must concentrate on each job I’m doing. Concentrate on the job. Don’t get distracted,” Suarez stated, particularly after her late husband acquired Alzheimer’s and he or she drove the 2 of them in every single place, together with Las Vegas and Palm Springs.
I thanked her for her assist and stated I hoped to fulfill her earlier than renewing my license in October.
She stated she was out there any time, together with the current.
“The place do you hang around?” Juarez requested.
Proper right here at my pc, making an attempt to make amends for all of the DMV emails.
steve.lopez@latimes.com
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