What are they doing down at the DMV?

To the editor:

In reference to the Nov. 7 Road Warrior column concerning vehicle insurance verification, the situation with the Department of Motor Vehicles seems to have gone from strange to weird.

Adrienne Packer reports that a new validation program was started earlier this year. I learned that it went online Feb. 1. I was not notified, however, until late August that the new program could not interpret my then-current insurance data. That was just one month prior to the expiration date of my auto registration.

I sent a copy of my current insurance card as proof of insurance and it, along with my torn-up check and an explanation, was mailed back to me on Sept. 20. The DMV's explanation was that, because my vehicle was registered in the name of my trust, my insurance must be in the name of the trust.

I called my insurance company, AARP Hartford, certainly not a smaller agency. The Hartford had to hand-type new evidence of insurance cards by using my name, which the DMV had accepted for the past 38 years, and then had to add "REV LV TR" to the end of my name. That insurance card has been accepted.

This concept is at odds with a quote from DMV spokesman Tom Jacobs, who says you can't insure a trust, and that only a person can be insured. My old insurance card showed me as a person. My new card shows me as a trust. Weird.

Mr. Jacobs also stated that, "If you have not had a lapse in insurance, you are going to be OK." I do not know what Mr. Jacobs means by "OK," because the situation again became extremely weird.

I received a letter by certified mail stating that my registration privileges will be "suspended" effective Oct. 19.

I had gone to a local DMV office on Sept. 28 and supposedly solved the problem by going face-to-face. I wrote a letter of complaint addressed to any DMV supervisor and turned it in at that local office.

As of this date, there has been no reply.

DOUG PLUNKETT

LAS VEGAS