Chicago DUI attorney comments on the privilege of a driver's license

This Chicago DUI attorney knows the importance of a valid driver's license.  It serves as everything from  acceptable photo I.D.; to allowing one to get a job; to of course enjoying the beauty of this vast country by hitting the road when we feel like it.  

The other day her husband couldn't find his driver's license.  She tells him to hustle down to the satellite office of the Secretary of State and make sure he has his Social Security Card, Passport, our marriage license, and a current utility bill in his name.  As much as a hassle as gathering all of these forms of identification can be to get a duplicate license in Illinois, it's nothing compared to having to take the road test.

From nytimes.com:

ONLY three times in my life have I been so scared that I trembled — legs quivering, hands jittering, heart out of control. The first was at 12, when I watched “The Exorcist” before I should have. The second was at 41, when, on the kind of dare to which middle-aged men seem peculiarly vulnerable, I got into a canvas harness and prepared to jump some 250 feet into a gorge in Zambia.

The third was a few months ago, on Staten Island, when I was asked by an examiner for the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles to pull out of a parking spot and drive toward a nearby stoplight.

This is a cautionary tale. Like too many harried New Yorkers without cars or much cause to use them, I let my driver’s license expire — in October 2006. Then, in an unlucky development the next May, I was pick-pocketed. The double whammy of an expired license that I could not physically produce meant I could no longer right the situation with a written exam and a vision check. I was effectively 16 again, on the hook for a five-hour class and the dreaded road test, which I came to fear I’d never reach, given the labyrinth of civil-service incompetence, bureaucratic nonsense and simple misfortune I had tumbled into. Kafka could have had a field day with me.

Granted, the stakes weren’t so high. Many people don’t drive, and on most days, not having a license hardly inconvenienced me. But there were vacations and work assignments that required rental cars — and travel companions fed up with my inability to share the burden.

One friend, after 20 hours on the back roads of Italy — him stuck behind the wheel, me barking out directions and haranguing about missed turns — started calling me Miss Daisy. Another, frazzled by driving on the left side through Scotland, begged me to step in, but I had conditions.

“If we get into an accident and neither of us is too injured to move,” I told her, “we quickly bolt out of the car and change seats before the police come.”

“Deal,” she said. “I even authorize you to move me to the driver’s seat if you’re ambulatory but I’m not.”

I also cheated on visits to my brother’s family in Southern California, continuing a longstanding tradition of piling his four kids into a car for an afternoon of fun without Mom and Dad.

I was petrified all the way to the multiplex that I’d somehow attract the attentions of a police officer, be stopped and berated and maybe even arrested in front of the children. I could only imagine the therapy bills. For me and them both.

“Why are you driving so slow, Uncle Frank?” my nephew, Harrison, then 7, asked.

“I’m not,” I lied. “Other adults just drive much, much too fast.” Then I hit the brakes, stopping at a light that I merely suspected was about to turn yellow.

Many people can relate to the fear of driving without a valid license.  The fear of taking the road test and coming into compliance is often enough to just ward some people away from the DMV.  Then there are the hosts of other issues like borrowing a car to take the test if you don't already own the car and unfortunately, because the individual can't read (don't be alarmed there is a test for folks who can't read, but you have to admit to the examiner that you can't read in order to get it).  Still, this fear is just a reminder that at some level, most of us realize that we don't have a right to drive without a valid driver's license.

 For what it's worth, my husband didn't have to go to the satellite office of the Secretary of State to get a license, we found it.