December 7 – “Did I see a bungee cord behind your seat?” The young lady asked this question as I stood there with a license plate in my hand. I had gotten it from behind the seat of the truck when she explained that I couldn’t take the driving test unless the license plate was on the front of the vehicle.
I had previously passed the written test, but the license plate number that had been knocked off in a parking lot a few days earlier jeopardized my chances of passing a driving test. The day was saved by the determined tester.
She grabbed the bungee cord and plate and secured it to the front of the truck in a few minutes. “Legal as an eagle,” she smiled as she dusted off her clothes. She gave me a short driving test and I got a brand new card.
That happened a few years ago at the testing station in Tilton. The service was certainly beyond what you would expect.
I have a lot of respect for the people who give those driving tests. Their cadre was established after a law was passed by the state of Illinois on July 1, 1953. This law required citizens to pass a successful driving test to obtain one of those precious little tickets.
The people who give the driving tests deserve respect. When they share a vehicle with the person they are testing, they have no idea of that person’s driving skills. One of the people I tested told me that she was injured when the person she was testing stopped in front of a car.
It was chaos on the highways that convinced state officials to pass the law in 1953. It was believed that there were people who got a driver’s license and did not have the right skills. Drivers have been able to obtain a driver’s license without passing an exam since 1939. Naturally, there was an explosion of discontent when the state asked people to purchase a license. Citizens had been driving without a driver’s license for decades, and many considered it an infringement on their freedom of movement to require a driver’s license.
There was some grumbling among the population about the new testing law, but not nearly as much as in 1939, when the state began requiring someone to purchase a “driver’s license.” Perhaps the statistics about highway accidents and fatalities made people realize they had to prove they could drive safely.
The first Danville testing station was reportedly located at 611 North Vermilion and then moved to 204 North Logan. From there it was located at 405 Sheridan, where it continued for decades. It is now located on Southgate Drive in Tilton. Another Department of Motor Vehicles branch is in Hoopeston.
My friend Harry Stricklin, who served as a captain and assistant chief during his long career with the Danville Fire Department, also worked for a time as a part-time license examiner. Harry was born in southern Illinois in 1908 and he had some interesting observations about people’s transition from horses to cars. He remembered that when he was a boy, his family still had a horse and buggy. Harry preferred the car.
He noted that the most difficult thing he encountered when administering tests was an elderly person who absolutely could not drive safely, but did not want to give up driving. This was even harder when the driver was someone he knew, and Harry knew a lot of people in Danville. He would reason with the driver who failed the test, explaining that he was sure he didn’t want to injure or kill anyone. “It could be a child,” he told them, recalling this as his most effective comment.
He recalled that some people were nervous during the driving test and that this sometimes resulted in problems shifting gears after a stop. He said automatic transmissions have solved this problem and are a big improvement for drivers. Harry passed away in 1978 and he would be amazed at the way vehicles are equipped today.
If you live long enough, you like to take the written test and the driving test every year (that’s the law). Fortunately, DMV has a helpful person ready to help you. At least that has been my experience over the years, even having someone smile, crawl under the front of my car and put a license plate on my truck.
