#it's expensive as heck and takes a LONG time to meet all your legal obligations

[ahnsael]

Two years later, the last physical remnant of the trouble I got into is going away tomorrow.

The DMV removed the restriction from my license today (it was a three hour wait, which I didn’t expect going in the middle of the week at opening time, but I’m glad I got it done -- I could have done it a month ago but was nervous about the process of getting these last loose ends tied), and after a couple games of phone tag between the manufacturer of the device and the auto shop which services it to finalize approval on both of their ends, tomorrow I get the ignition interlock removed from my car.

Now there’s just the SR-22 insurance for two more years before I can go back to regular insurance (but the SR-22 isn’t much more expensive than the regular version anyway).

We have a guy at work who’s mind isn’t in it lately. Because he just his FOURTH DUI. His third was a legal battle (three in seven years becomes a felony and involves prison time and there was a question as to whether it was from the occurrence of the first one or the sentencing and the court gave him the benefit of the doubt but then he did it AGAIN two months later). I don’t see how you don’t learn your lesson after the first one. And even if not then, the punishment is more severe for subsequent instances. So he’s looking at a lengthy prison sentence this time.

I got 48 hours. Well, technically 62 days, but 60 days were suspended pending my completion of other court-ordered responsibilities like both group and individual counseling, DUI school, a victim’s impact panel (in which victims of crashes caused by drunk drivers told their stories -- including some VERY graphic images), being under the watch of “alternative sentencing” for a year (basically that meant zero drinking, random tests to see whether I had had anything to drink, home visits to see if I had any alcohol around, all of which punishable by either a day in jail or kicking in the entire 60-day suspended sentence), having an interlock installed in ANY car I might drive for a year after reinstating my license (I only drive my own so I only needed the one, at $67 per month which from what I’m told is a pretty good price; I’ll have to pay “$50-$60 or somewhere around there, I’m not entirely sure” tomorrow when I get it removed but it SUCKS for people with no credit/debit card because it’s literally the ONLY way you’re allowed to pay, keeping low-income people without a card from being able to fulfill that obligation and that order does NOT expire a year from sentencing, it expires one year FROM WHEN YOU REINSTATE YOUR LICENSE and you can’t reinstate your license until you have the device installed -- I had to show the DMV the installation paperwork last year), and SR-22 insurance (including Statement of financial Responsibility -- that’s the SR part) for three years.

At one point as I talked to the (actually very nice) DMV lady today she asked whether I still had the device installed or whether it had already been removed. She framed it as a way to say “Show them this temporary license which shows no restriction and they’ll be able to remove it” but I’m guessing it was a “gotcha” question, as removing it before having the restriction removed from my license would have violated the restriction of my license. But I bet they get people saying “My year was up last week so I had it removed,” therefore getting themselves in more trouble (I was actually half-expecting them to want to see it in my car, maybe punch some buttons and get my latest statistics as far as “has he had any violations since the last time he had it serviced and we were sent his data?” but that didn’t happen...I also had the original installation paperwork and the original court order in my jacket pocket just in case, since I had to show both when I reinstated my license, even though they scanned them at the time -- when I first reinstated my license they forgot the restriction so I had to go back and have them put it on). I’m also wondering whether the three-hour wait was intentional, since most people are there for renewals or new licenses or to change their address or register a vehicle, and those of us in the “C” group broke the law, which was why we were there. Kind of makes me feel like they were testing our patience to see if we gave them attitude about seeing SO MANY people who got there after us called first. But I was as nice to the DMV lady as I would have been had I waited 10 minutes, and by the end the lady next to her behind the counter was complimenting my Genie tie (Genie from Aladdin -- I went there straight from work this morning so I was still dressed up from work).

An interesting aside...I shave my head, but have a beard. I asked the lady, pointing to the gray under my chin, “At what point to I change my official hair color to gray?” (the color listed on the original police report). She said it was basically up to me, and that I could even put “bald” if I wanted to since I shave my head, but sometimes the hair grows out a bit between shavings and I want to make sure I’m in compliance. But I pointed to my eyebrows as evidence of the “brown” that I put down, and she accepted that. She said switching to “gray” is pretty much up to me as long as SOME of the original color remains, but then we shared a laugh about people with completely gray hair who put down “black” as their hair color (that was when I pointed out my non-graying eyebrows as evidence that while I do have some gray in there, it still is mostly brown).

She also laughed when I said the only “stat” that had changed in the past 13 months since reinstating my license was my weight, which I upped by 15 pounds for honesty’s sake. She said she NEVER would have done that, but then I said that I used to be about 35 pounds more than I am now, so I’m pretty good with where I’m at and would rather be accurate on a REAL ID-compliant license -- even though weight fluctuates, the weight I put is my average these days.

And after I got a little worried about phone battery after playing cell phone games for an hour, I then spent the next two hours *almost* finishing Rolly Crump’s book “It’s Kind of a Cute Story,” which I hadn’t picked up in so long that the Kindle app had updated and completely forgotten where I had left off (I only realized that I read two chapters that I had already read when I came upon a section that I had highlighted). I’m about halfway through the last chapter now. The Kindle app takes a LOT less battery than playing a game that has to communicate with the internet (especially since the DMV’s WiFi was worse than Disneyland’s as far as reliability, which is kind of saying a lot).

But anyway, other than the (only slightly) higher insurance bill for the next two years, all of this kerfuffle will be behind me tomorrow. No more breathing into my car before I can start it. No more worrying that “I bartended this morning, and I spilled some on my pants...will the interlock pick that up and fail me? (it happened a couple times, as did using an alcohol-based window de-icer this winter and then having the fumes from the can in the car when I tried to start it; I learned to leave the can outside the car after using it, but there are “rolling tests” where they are trying to see if you drank after starting the car and have six minutes to provide a passing same of breath and so I would have to pull over, remove the can, and then re-take the test to make sure I didn’t get COMPLETELY locked out -- I did have violations based on this, but found out a week ago when I emailed the DMV that it takes four consecutive months of such violations for the terms of the interlock to be extended, even if I had to air out my car before I could successfully start my car at the time).

After those violations, I was worried my time was going to be extended, so I was SO happy to receive a reply from the DMV last week telling me that they had looked at my records, and I was good to get the restriction removed. I had thought ANY violation would result in “more time with this thing in my car.”

And on the WAY to the DMV...I ran into a problem I’ve run into a couple times in the past couple months.

Ever since getting the interlock serviced in December, I’ve had issues with it rebooting itself.

Now, if you turn off the car with a pending test, that’s another violation. And the thing would tell me to breathe into it (it’s actually more throat-humming with this device -- it prevents someone taking a lungful of fresh air and then breathing in to beat it; humming in your throat means air from INSIDE of you is going through and it can detect alcohol you maybe thought you could hide).

So there have been times I’ve driven to work, parked, and just before turning off my car the interlock would ask for a “rolling test.” I couldn’t just turn my car off. That would be a violation, which the DMV would hear about. But if I picked the device up and it went blank as I blew into it, then said “Initializing,” I learned NOT to turn the car off (the hard way, when I got a violation for it). Just sit there in the parking spot, engine running, and wait for it to ask for a test again.

On my way to the DMV today, though, the device wanted a “rolling test.” Which I expected. The first “rolling test” can be 5-10 minutes after starting the car, and subsequent tests come every 45 minutes to an hour (and you have six minutes to provide a breath sample before you are locked out). When I drove to Disneyland in September, I can’t even guess as to how many tests I had to take as I drove, to make sure I was still sober.

But today, it asked me to re-test. I did. I heard the tell-tale “click” by my left knee that tells me it just sent a signal to the car that it’s okay to restart if I shut it down. But instead of “PASS” on the screen, the screen was blank. Then it said “initializing.” Then it asked me to test again with a beep. I did so. This time, it not only made the click on my ignition switch to turn it on, but said “PASS” -- fir about a half-second before going back to “INITIALIZING.”

When it came back up, I only had two minutes and 30 seconds left to provide a sample. I thought, “If this thing keeps resetting itself, I’m going to get a violation on the way to the DMV for permission to remove this.”

Fortunately, on the third try, the test was passed WITHOUT the device restarting itself (I am SO glad to get rid of this thing because it’s been doing this a lot for the past two months and while I’m passing the tests, it doesn’t always KNOW that I pass the tests before rebooting itself).

But at 10:00am tomorrow, I get this thing OUT of my car. If it’s anything like the installation, I’ll be there for about an hour. Which will still beat my wait time at the DMV today. I’ll probably finish Rolly Crump’s book and then either play some video games on my phone or start something new to read, like the continuations of the book which I’ve already bought.

But video games are more likely -- this shop, as I’ve seen personally and heard from other customers, does not only good work, but QUICK work, so I don’t want to get too into reading and then be disappointed when they have it done.