Vehicle Administration

Nobody is talking about a return of the good ol' days yet, but there are signs that Maryland's beleaguered auto sales industry is on the road to recovery.According to title registration figures released yesterday by the state Motor Vehicle Administration (MVA), dealers sold 27 percent more new vehicles last month than in July 1992.And the MVA's figures for the first seven months of the year were up nearly 8 percent over the same period last year.The sharp monthly gain took industry people by surprise, and left some wondering whether the numbers were inflated by a few big fleet sales.

OK. Here's my plan. We unplug America. We demagnetize the metal strips on the back of plastic cards; we permanently lose the remote control; and we place roadblocks at all the entrance ramps to the information superhighway. In other words, we ought to go back to the days before computer chips when life was slower and people were nicer.I don't hate high-tech gadgetry. I just don't see how it has made life that much easier. "Techno-rot" one writer calls it -- his name for telephone answering systems that send you in circles, data banks that know more about you than your mother, and all the computerized stuff that's too complicated for the average person to figure out.Bureaucrats and jerks love anything that has a computer chip in it. They take new technology and figure out ways to use it to make your life miserable.

IN THE PAST, I have written of my trepidation at the thought of my son driving a car, and I have praised Maryland's new graduated licensing program for all the speed bumps it put in his path toward a license. That was then. This is now. After two years riding around in the passenger's seat of my own vehicle -- going places I did not need to go -- I grabbed my student driver by the lapels and said, in the same patient and instructive tone of voice I always use with him: "Look! Let's just get this driver's license thing done!

The MVA employee accused of passing two fraudulent state driver's licenses to the 18-year-old suspect in a murder and abduction spree is under protective police custody after being granted immunity from prosecution, according to a police source.In turn, the employee has started to detail a more widespread scheme to provide illegal documents like driver's licenses and Motor Vehicle Administration identification cards, said the source, who is close to the investigation and has requested anonymity.

The television commercial depicts a plainclothes investigator with the Motor Vehicle Administration -- a secret agent, if you will -- sneaking up to a parked car in order to remove its tags. "Don't let this happen to you!" intones an announcer in a doomsday voice. The commercial is for an area automobile insurance company, warning us of what can happen to motorists who drive uninsured."You guys don't really do stuff like that, do you?" I ask a spokesman for the state Motor Vehicle Administration.

Maybe it was the 80-degree heat, the lines or the mind-numbing paperwork. But a string of motorists trudging out of the Glen Burnie Motor Vehicle Administration office last week were fatalistic about a plan to raise $44 million annually through steep increases in dozens of motor vehicle fees.Billy Coral, a 42-year-old house salesman who had just picked up vehicle title, seemed skeptical but resigned. (The fee for registering most cars, currently between $1 and $3, would rise to $12 under the plan.

A table of increased Motor Vehicle Administration fees published in The Sun yesterday incorrectly listed the old 45-day temporary fee for dealers. The increase is from 50 cents to $5.The Sun regrets the errors.ANNAPOLIS -- Legislators quickly patched the leaky state budget yesterday with money lifted from parks, housing and emergency funds.Then they jump-started $467 million in stalled road and other transportation projects with sharply higher fees for motorists.And then, brushing past summer tourists and protesting state workers conducting a demonstration, they got out of town.

Well, she's still fat.Regina Elizabeth Guy, the woman who proved to the Motor Vehicle Administration -- and the world -- that she's not too fat to drive, tips the scales at 336 pounds. Correction. Make that 336 luminous, in-your-face-and-proud-of-it pounds.In 1990, Ms. Guy was a 25-year-old, 367-pound nursing assistant deemed by the Motor Vehicle Administration as too fat to drive a car without special equipment. She took that as a rebuke, and so did a great many other fat folks who made Ms. Guy's case a cause celebre.

For the seventh time in nearly three years, Del. Leslie E. Hutchinson didn't show up in court yesterday to face traffic charges -- this time that she used a state House of Delegates tag issued to her uncle in 1970 to drive an uninsured car.By the time she arrived in Essex District Court, tearful, contrite and 45 minutes late, the judge had issued a warrant for her arrest."

Parents of four teenage drivers have received letters from the Carroll County sheriff this month with details of their children's motor vehicle violations. Not one parent has inquired about the citations, most of which were for dangerous driving, officials said. The letter, which begins: "In the interest of public safety and that of your child," names the driver and gives the time, location and any pertinent details of the violation. "I was prepared for parents to call to ask for circumstances of the stop," said Maj. Thomas H. Long, a Sheriff's Department spokesman and chief of the field services bureau.