N.C. DoT puts on its Bad Idea Jeans

When I got pulled over twice in one week for having expired tags/ inspection, I thought something might be up… besides my own bad luck, I mean. Now that the changes to North Carolina’s tag renewal process seem to be all over the news, I’m seriously wondering if a cash-strapped state sent out a memo to target drivers in my boat.

And there are a lot of them: according to the News & Record, 1,000 North Carolinians each week are finding that their mailed-in tag renewals aren’t valid because they haven’t first gotten that year’s inspection. What seems at first like government efficiency (an oxymoron if ever there was one) actually reveals an ignorance of, and insensitivity to, the headaches caused by the change.

Take me, for example. I honestly forgot that my tags expired last summer, and only discovered this when I met with an agent to switch my car insurance on Saturday, Feb. 13. On Monday, Feb. 15, at about 9 a.m., a Winston-Salem police officer pulled me over and gave me a ticket for my tag, which had expired about eight months earlier. (Part of me thinks I should get immunity for managing to not get caught for this long. I mean, it’s not like the sticker’s on the back of my frakking car or anything.) As further luck would have it, this was a particularly hectic week at work, with lots of meetings I couldn’t miss; then it snowed some more and I got a cold. In the meantime, I went to get my car inspected, only to be told by an apparently critically clueless person that I had to renew my tag first (???). On Friday, when I was on my way to work for one of said meetings despite said cold, when a Greensboro police officer pulled me over. Mercifully, he let me go with no ticket and a lecture about how renewing my tag is more important than my job, my cold or anything else on earth.

Here begins the fun part. I take my car to a garage near my office, which charges me $23 for an emissions test and tells me I have a faulty socket in my brake light. I can take the car back to them within 30 days to complete the inspection for only $6. But first, I have to take the car to the Saturn dealership back home in Winston-Salem to replace the light socket. The people at Flow are fabulous, and even give me a ride to the DMV to renew my driver’s license while I wait for the car (three months early! Do I get points for this?). This being Friday, I lay low all weekend until I can get back to Greensboro to complete the inspection (because I refuse to drop another $23 at a new place).

Week 2: Back to the place whose name rhymes with Schmriendly Schmire schmand Schmauto, where I’m informed that I still have a brake light bulb out. But they’re reluctant to take the light apart, ‘cause it’s a terribly frightening Saturn. They tell me to take it back to the dealership, where the Flow folks tell me a) the new bulb basically wasn’t screwed in all the way, b) it’s good to go now, and c) I should really just let them inspect the car next time. (I agree on all points.) More meetings, more days I can’t take off early…

And here begins the pissed off part. It’s Friday, Feb. 26, and I’m going to be out of town ‘til next Wednesday at a conference, where I will likely drive past many cops, so I REALLY need this inspection thing wrapped up. Back to the remaining-nameless local shop at the office whose still holding my sticker hostage. Guess what? One of my brake light bulbs is STILL out! Schmire & Schmauto guy once again is afraid to poke and prod at a Saturn, so I break it down: I am NOT taking this car back to the dealership just to find ONCE AGAIN that nothing is wrong. Take a look, and if something is in fact wrong, THEN I will take it back to Saturn. I literally have to stand over this man while he pops off the light assembly cover and learns – wonder of wonders – it’s just a burnt-out bulb after all! No worries, while I wait for “delivery” of a bulb they should have in stock anyway, which comes in at roughly 4:15. Sticker on! 35 minutes and one convenient ATM later (because the DMV still doesn’t take plastic), I ‘m legal again. Until June, when I get to go through this all over again.

So I’ve been reflecting on why we do this dance, anyway. License renewal is a pain in the ass, but it matters. Not that I’m going to forget how to drive or anything. But currently, a driver’s license in N.C. is $4 a year, which I don’t think is exorbitant. Inspections are also a pain in the ass, but they keep bald-tire, overly polluting cars off the road (at least in theory). The tag thing, though, in my opinion, is BS. A total pocket-liner for the state. My CAR is registered, my LICENSE is registered, but I need to register a TAG, and renew it each year? Someone explain the rationale of this to me.

And it gets better. Starting next year, the state will require you to have paid your taxes before you can renew your tags. Multiple problems, personal and policy: my tags are due in June, and my taxes in October. So now, I must not only come up with the cash to fix anything on my car that might make it un-inspectable, I also have to pay taxes FOR WHICH FORSYTH COUNTY HAS NOT EVEN BILLED ME before I can have the privilege of paying another $28 to get a totally meaningless sticker for my car’s tags? EVERY YEAR???

This doesn’t even make sense. What if I were still a teenager or college student, and my car were still registered to my parents? (Meaning I have no control over paying the taxes on the car.) Bad, bad, bad, bad policy.

It’s bad policy because the reality is that none of us has any option but to own and drive a car. Car-owning isn’t a privilege for people who just don’t want to take public transportation. We don’t HAVE public transportation! Now, if the state wants to invest in light rail and bus lines that run once in a blue moon, draconian measures against car-owners would be less of an issue.

In a republic, there should always be an opt-out. Even in our country today, there are opt-outs: don’t earn income at a certain level? Don’t pay income tax. Don’t own property? Don’t pay property tax. Don’t buy things? Don’t pay sales tax. But the state has this one all wrong. Implementing these poorly thought out laws is inefficient and costs us all money, publicly and individually.

(Don't get the Bad Idea Jeans reference? Click here.)