Your Papers, Please...
...by Mark Drake
Country folks being the obliging sorts they are, and poor folk being often plagued with vehicle reliability problems, a lot more car borrowing goes on around here than in yuppieland. Time was when neither the borrower nor the lender needed to give a moment's thought to it. There was little likelihood of being stopped by police in the first place unless you did something wrong, there wasn't much paper you had to come up with if stopped, and -- unless you were behaving feloniously -- the consequences of not having your papers in order would be limited to a ticket you'd have to deal with.
That was then; this is now. There are more road patrollers per capita than there used to be, and Satan finds work for idle hands. Headquarters is afflicted (as any bureaucracy tends to be) with mission creep syndrome, and "proactive" drug enforcement necessitates initiating contacts with the populace in order to set up searches. Because of the demographics of rapid expansion of the force, a larger proportion of officers on the beat these days are youngbloods, fresh out of school with something to prove. The upshot is, you're considerably more likely to be subjected to a stop these days no matter how you drive. (The watershed event here has to have been passage of Vehicle Code section 27315 in its present form, effectively allowing police to stop you to find out whether you're wearing your seatbelt. Thirty-nine other states have so far elected not to cross this perilous threshold.)
The once quite limited circumstances in which a vehicle could be impounded and towed at the owner's expense on an officer's whim have been considerably expanded of late, and more are added with each passing legislative session.
Do yourself a favor before you lend your wheels: Put the insurance and registration papers in one, established place -- like one of those holders that clip to a visor, or strap around the steering column. (A well-marked envelope or baggie in an orderly glovebox works too, but if you have reservations about a snoopy cop eagerly investigating your glove compartment while you or a borrower rummages through it in quest of that envelope, the single-purpose holder in a specially dedicated location has merit.)
Do yourself a favor before you drive off in a loaner: Find out where those papers are -- and if in any doubt, whether they're actually current. You could save yourself a long walk.
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