DMV Work Could Be a Hazard to Your Health

The walls at the California Department of Motor Vehicles are under assault, both literally and metaphorically.

Drivers have blasted their cars right through the walls of DMV offices three times in the last year. At least once a month, someone threatens to blow up a DMV office or otherwise cause mayhem, the agency reports.

In Sacramento, DMV Director Steven Gourley is being hounded by political adversaries--stoked, he says, by in-house traitors unhappy with his internal investigation of racial discrimination.

Even as the DMV has managed to reduce lines and speed paperwork in recent years, it is under enormous internal duress. The agency’s plight might seem humorous--unless you happen to sit on the other side of the counter and depend on the DMV for a living.

Faye Hearn was sitting at her small workstation next to the south wall of the agency’s Culver City office when a 77-year-old woman blasted through last year. The driver, thinking another applicant was trying to take cuts in the line for a road test, floored the accelerator and drove through the wall, severing the leg of one man and injuring four others.

“In all the years I have been here, we have had gang violence, people have had babies in here, but nothing like that,” Hearn said in a recent interview. “I would never do driving tests. They couldn’t pay me enough.”

That’s just what DMV driving examiners are saying. In current contract negotiations, their union is arguing for hazard pay.

The agency’s 581 examiners were involved in 332 accidents during fiscal year 2000, putting the odds at better than 50-50 that an individual examiner was involved in an on-the-job crash during those 12 months. What’s more, 106 examiners were injured--that’s nearly 20% of the work force.

Eileen Poe, a 46-year veteran of the DMV and a union activist, knows the risks well. Poe was conducting a road test last year when a 32-year-old applicant became disoriented and gunned her accelerator while leaving the parking lot. Thinking fast, Poe leaned over and turned off the ignition, but she wasn’t quick enough. The car did a 360-degree circle and smacked right into the DMV office.

“It knocked a big hole in the wall,” Poe recalled. “She said she thought she was hitting the brake.”

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Road tests are conducted in applicants’ vehicles, of course, and that gives examiners great insight into human behavior. Poe tells of one fellow who showed up for a test with a flock of chickens in the back of his station wagon, separated from the front seat by a wire fence.

“They come in with some of the filthiest cars,” she said. “You name it, I’ve seen it.”

The not-so-funny risks for examiners are growing worse every year, a byproduct of more foreign drivers whose very first time behind the wheel is with a DMV examiner, Poe said, and new road tests meant to improve public safety. Injuries have increases fivefold just since 1992.

California allows law enforcement agencies to refer drivers for supplementary driving tests after an accident or ticket, or if an officer suspects that a driver has poor vision, mental problems, Alzheimer’s disease or another degenerative condition. These are regrettable problems, Poe said, but such tests put DMV examiners at great risk.

Then there’s the “priority reexam,” which mandates that the ticketed driver undergo a road test with the DMV within three days; such tests were created after a driver ran a red light and killed a police officer just two weeks after being ticketed for running the same light.

That’s not exactly the kind of driver you want to ride with.

“I think this has increased our risk greatly,” Poe said. “We do not get hazard pay. The state doesn’t supply us with a cell phone. If you have an accident out there, you have to fend for yourself.”

It’s not as dangerous inside DMV offices, but the agency’s problems there are telling too. Hearn, an agency clerk for longer than she is willing to say, has a 20-year-old computer screen with black and green type so dim that you have to squint to see anything. Her broken stapler is held together by the type of yellow cellophane tape that became obsolete in most offices in the 1960s.

“It’s all kind of outdated,” Hearn said. “You have to work with what you have.”

On top of that, her job is steadily getting more complex. When people apply for driver’s licenses, clerks must check for child support arrearage, Social Security name matches and passport verification. There are an ever-growing number of insurance forms.

Starting pay is $11.89 an hour. The DMV says 69% of its rank-and-file workers are minorities and 82% are women. In the Culver City office, almost every clerk is an African American woman. Along with those statistics comes the public attitude.

“We get millionaires to the poorest people, but they all come in here with the same attitude: We work for the government and that’s the way we get off welfare,” Hearn lamented.

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Director Gourley has troubles of his own. State Senate leaders from both parties have demanded his resignation for launching an investigation into a college student from Kuwait who had cut him off on a Los Angeles freeway. Gourley later acknowledged that he had overstepped his authority.

He defends his overall performance, saying he is working to make the DMV more active in improving auto safety, reduce wait times in offices and raise morale among his legion of minority female employees.

On a recent morning, Gourley worked the clerk desks, part of his routine of spending time with front-line employees throughout the state and trying to pay attention to their ideas and problems.

He blames his political problems in part on malcontents within the DMV’s top ranks, who he says are angry that he has called in the state Department of Personnel Administration to investigate possible racial and sexual harassment.

“I am starting an investigation into racism at the department,” Gourley said, “and a lot of people don’t like it.”

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Ralph Vartabedian cannot answer mail personally but responds in this column to automotive questions of general interest. Please do not telephone. Write to Your Wheels, Business Section, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. E-mail: ralph.vartabedian@latimes.com.