ARGHHHH!!!!!!!!
Mar. 5th, 2007 09:18 amThe sound of a Daveon hitting the brickwall of the DMV at full speed.
On Sunday we bought a car. It's not a fantastic car, but it has a lot of nice stuff in it. The mileage is a tad higher than I'd like in a 3 year old car, but it seems to have been well looked after and its a Honda so one can presume that it'll last pretty much forever mechanically. Plus the car dealer were able to arrange some credit which was quite important for establishing some kind of credit track record.
However, now it's got silly. Washington have apparently changed a lot of rules about car ownership recently (i.e. last 6 months) so that now we need to have a Washington Drivers License to get a car and insurance. So first thing this morning we presented ourselves in the rugby scrum of a queue. As we were there before it opened we got seen reasonably quickly. Sadly that's when the next block of problems started...
... UK driving licenses are not acceptable in Washington and we have to take a retest. "It's the law m'kay" - (I am not kidding)
... Driving testing centres in Seattle do not open on Mondays
... There is no appointment system
... You have to take the written test, for which there is one crappy online trial test, and no other books of any kind
... Then the real problems kick in... you need to book 1-4 weeks in advance for a driving test...
Apart from having been driving for 20 years, 15 years with an unblemished record, I can see the need for the theory test, but a driving test??? Come on guys... Get real...
Not to mention there isn't a single reference to what to do if you're not a US citizen anywhere on the WA DMV website. For a state which has Boeing and Microsoft that's just daft.
On Sunday we bought a car. It's not a fantastic car, but it has a lot of nice stuff in it. The mileage is a tad higher than I'd like in a 3 year old car, but it seems to have been well looked after and its a Honda so one can presume that it'll last pretty much forever mechanically. Plus the car dealer were able to arrange some credit which was quite important for establishing some kind of credit track record.
However, now it's got silly. Washington have apparently changed a lot of rules about car ownership recently (i.e. last 6 months) so that now we need to have a Washington Drivers License to get a car and insurance. So first thing this morning we presented ourselves in the rugby scrum of a queue. As we were there before it opened we got seen reasonably quickly. Sadly that's when the next block of problems started...
... UK driving licenses are not acceptable in Washington and we have to take a retest. "It's the law m'kay" - (I am not kidding)
... Driving testing centres in Seattle do not open on Mondays
... There is no appointment system
... You have to take the written test, for which there is one crappy online trial test, and no other books of any kind
... Then the real problems kick in... you need to book 1-4 weeks in advance for a driving test...
Apart from having been driving for 20 years, 15 years with an unblemished record, I can see the need for the theory test, but a driving test??? Come on guys... Get real...
Not to mention there isn't a single reference to what to do if you're not a US citizen anywhere on the WA DMV website. For a state which has Boeing and Microsoft that's just daft.