The case of the missing road tests

Other than having to execute a Y-turn, I don't remember a thing about my road test. Oh, and it was a nice warm spring day. My scant memories are not surprising, as I got my driver's license over 60 years ago. But there was definitely a road test. 

Most of my prep for the road test was me behind the wheel, my father in the passenger seat. Our preliminary practice outings in St. Joseph's Cemetery, where you couldn't do all that much harm - at least to the living - if things got out of control. Then we went out on a road trip, mostly on Worcester's Mill Street, a wide drag known at The Speedway. 

My closest high school friend Marie's father was the traffic cop on The Speedway. But we never got stopped. I'm pretty sure I was driving slowly (and nervously). 

I remember very little about driving with my father. He wasn't the world's most patient person, but I never remember him yelling or doing anything to upset me. 

At about the same time I was learning to drive, my mother - at the advanced age of 46 - was learning as well. My father took her out to the cemetery, but it did not go well. So my mother enrolled in a driver's school to learn the ropes from someone completely neutral.

In a sense, my mother's driver's ed (on-the-road classes) was the opposite of mine in terms of her on-the-road instructor.

Before I headed out with my father, with whom I did just fine, I went out a few times with a nasty driving instructor, Francis I. [Irish last name redacted], who took me out for the first time up and down the steepest hill in Worcester. Which at the time was ice-covered. He spent the entire hour screaming at me. All I remember of his shout-fest was "hands at 10-2."

I think I went with him once more, before quitting driver's ed.

I picked it up again in the spring, with my father. 

To get the insurance discount, I believe that teen-age drivers had to have six road lessons at a driver's school, so I'm sure I went back. Just not with Francis I. [Irish last name redacted]. I believe my final road instructor was Terrance O'Hara, a very sweet guy who I'd already taken the classroom "training"course with. Mr. O'Hara was a school teacher moonlighting at Carey's Auto School. Drive with Care(y).

I'm pretty sure she never hit the road with Francis I. [Irish last name redacted.] My father bringing her to tears would have been quite enough. 

Anyway, my mother - who never became a confident and highly-skilled driver - passed her road test, too. 

But a couple of thousand drivers in Massachusetts got their licenses without having to hit the road. 

Four Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles workers have been fired after 2,100 drivers were given licenses without taking a road test.0All of those-2 drivers will now have to take the test in the next ten days or their licenses will be suspended.

The agency notified law enforcement back in 2020 after a Registry supervisor noticed suspicious activity at the Brockton customer service center.

Investigators found that, starting back in April 2018, about 2,100 people had been given drivers licenses by two road test examiners at the Brockton center without ever taking a road test.

The two examiners and two service center employees were fired. (Source: CBS Local)

No hands 10-2? No parallel parking? No rotary? No Y-turn? No road test???

Notices went out to the "Registry 2,100" informing them that they had to pass a road test within ten days - or have their license suspended. If they flunk, they'll be issued a learner's permit. 

I'm pretty sure that working for the Registry isn't all that onerous. 

Maybe the pay's not great, but probably more than employees would earn in the private sector. And with better benefits and security.

So why risk it by not taking care of their assigned tasks?

Oh, maybe giving road tests was nerve-wracking. And if you flunked someone, you might have gotten a fair amount of abuse. But it seems like a relatively cushy job with not a ton of heavy lifting. 

Were these folks just lazy? Were they getting kickbacks from folks who couldn't pass the road test?

Anyway, it seems like a pretty foolish course that the Registry Four may well be regretting.

As for giving 2,100 drivers ten days to retake the test, I call ridiculous.

How about looking at the records, and letting anyone who hasn't had a moving violation keep their license without having to take a road test.

Seems like a colossal waste of time and resources to just declare these licenses valid.

And speaking of valid/invalid this reminds me of a situation that has arisen in Arizona where, for nearly twenty years, a Catholic priest was saying "we baptize" rather than "I baptize." So a bishop has declared all those baptisms invalid, and folks that were "illegally" baptized have to schedule a do-over. And it gets worse. (Of course.) Their first holy communion and confirmation are downstream sacarments that are, thus, invalidated as well.

Apparently, this isn't the first time it's happened. 

Over the past few years, a couple of ordained priests in other dioceses found out that their baptisms from back in the day were - having been 'we' rather than 'I' baptisms -  invalid, rendering the priests' ordinations invalid, and any marriages or baptisms they performed invalid, as well. 

Seems like someone should be able to wave some incense and/or holy water around and declare all these sacraments valid.

Gotta love the Catholic Church's reasoning, fo' sho. 

Oy, just oy.

At least those Massachusetts drivers who've been caught up in the (latest) Registry scandal aren't saddled with any down the road problems. Unless someone decides that everytime they used their license as a form of ID they were committing fraud... (Let's not give them any ideas.)