For the first nine years of my driving carer, I never got a traffic ticket in my home state.
And then I moved to Virginia.
For multiple years now, my new home commonwealth has been ranked as the best state in which to start a business; but it has been a tough place to start a clean driving record.
See, I learned to drive in Maryland, where radar detectors were legal and the roads were as smooth as you’d expect from the number one state road system as ranked by AAA. Maryland, where I was once was in the slow lane, doing 85mph (in a 65mph zone), while being passed by—no joke—a dump truck.
In my first four years in Virginia, I piled six speeding tickets and one warning onto my driving record. The two that got me in trouble, though, happened in just one of those years. And that was the problem.
Double Whammy
Virginia had a law that stated that, if a driver earned two tickets in one calendar year for speeds in excess of twenty miles per hour over the limit, they automatically lost their license—regardless of how many points they had on their record. So, a Wednesday night dash on Old Forest Road to our Spanish-speaking church (to install an A/V cable before a service) and then an argument with my wife while in the HOV lane of I-66 in Manassas earned me my first certified post from the DMV. That letter sentenced me to a day in remedial driving school, where my fellow classmate bragged about riding with heat, in case he had to let somebody know—you know.
Driver re-education knocked a bunch of points off my license but didn’t save me from 90 days of a suspended drivers license, which allowed me to drive only for work purposes. Thankfully, as a self-employed worker, almost everywhere in Lynchburg was on the way to a Bank of America branch, a post office, Staples, or pro bono client. So, I kept a check to cash in the car with my excuse letter and drove like my mother-in-law does.
Double Time
That was 2006. After getting my license reinstated, I was placed on a 6-month probation. Earning no tickets during that time, my license was spared from being suspended again and was awarded an 18-month “control period.” The deal was this: if I got a ticket during that year and a half, I went back to probation. You get the idea.
Fast forward to December 2008—two weeks from trading my first MINI Cooper S in for my current one and, more importantly, six weeks from the end of this whole 27-month deal. My YMCA lifting partner had just left me for ultramarathon running, and I was on my way to the gym an hour later than normal—just in time for basketball. I saw some blinking lights at an intersection and thought they were the ones that announce that the light was about to turn red. Nope. They were school zone lights for a school not yet open—and with no entrances on that road. So, despite doing 44mph in a 45mph zone, I was busted for 19mph over the limit.
When the officer pulled me over a mile later, I told him my situation. He told me my record showed no points—as in zero. I explained that my license wasn’t suspended for points. So, the kind policeman post-dated my court date until after my “control period” and wished me luck. I plead guilty and thought I’d walked out the court room a free man.
Unappealable
Then I got a letter from the DMV saying my license was being suspended. When I called the Richmond office, the cold, condescending agent told me that the conviction date didn’t matter. Infraction date was their point of reference, and no DMV decision was appealable or influenced by local jurisdictions. Also, because I had gotten another ticket somehow in the same exact spot (fittingly, in front of a doughnut shop) within weeks of my court date, the dynamic duo of tickets knocked me all the way back to the suspension that preceded the six months that preceded the eighteen months. The clock was reset to 26 months this time, instead of 27.
That was almost four years ago.
Somewhere in there I got a ticket in one county (Bedford) for a speeding infraction in another (Campbell). The kicker: the police officer told me I got caught, only because of the vivid vinyl wrap on my car. Paraphrase: “It was so interesting, I paid attention to your car that I hadn’t realized was speeding; but then I saw the radar gun.” Didn’t matter, as my tickets usually come in bunches; and in 2010, they came as a trio. If you’re scoring at home, you should have eleven tickets in eight years. Amazingly enough, I still qualified for my insurance company’s good driver program, while having to swap my driver’s license multiple times.
Relief
Somehow, I made it to today. Don’t ask me how. I didn’t deserve it.
I went to the mail box. There were a couple early birthday cards, a $4,800 paycheck, and a letter-size envelope from the DMV. I had just paid a renewal fee on my license; so, I thought it might be a receipt or something. All my correspondence in the past about the status of my driving record had arrived via certified mail; so, I wasn’t prepared for what I was about to read—especially since I thought my freedom date was in December.
No DMV spokesperson. No phone call. No request to come down to the DMV branch office to get some special new driver’s license. As unceremoniously and anonymously as my freedom was snatched, it was restored.
I wanted to shout at my mailbox, but my neighbor was washing his Yukon; and I’m already the crazy, orange-mohawk guy in the neighborhood.
The speed limits haven’t changed. Cruisers still hide between the median mounds and behind the shoulder obstructions around my fair city. The DMV is no more merciful. But today, for the first time in six years, I’m not looking over my shoulder—because nobody’s looking over mine.
