Articles
Drivers License Restoration is fairly new it’s only been around since about 1992. Prior to that you had to would go to circuit court to get their license back after they had a number of drinking and driving offenses. However the Michigan legislature was getting a lot of pressure and took away circuit court’s power to give anybody a restricted license.
The only place they could go at that time after that time was the driver’s license appeal division or the secretary of state which is basically a little court in and off itself. So here you had a system that was mandated by the state to tighten things up and what happened after that was people going to the courts on their own, making an appeal for their license and for the most part getting rejected.
I tell people the secretary of state especially here in Michigan is very tough in regards to giving you any driving privileges. People will call up and say “hey can I get just a restricted license to drive to and from work” and the answer is no. They’re just very tough.
Normally you have to wait a year after your last conviction to even ask for a hearing. What I do is I actually conduct the hearing, a mock hearing if you will. So that means that there is no reason for you to be nervous when you go there because you will have heard all the questions that are going to be asked and I will have liked and approved of all your answers. If I don’t like your answers we go back to school and polish you up so that you’re the best that you can be by the time you get there. With this method of preparation I have an over 90% success rate in getting people their license back when we do go to the secretary of state.
The best path to getting your license restored is to attend AA meetings, Alcoholics Anonymous and be able to give AA type answers. And a lot of people will say to me well you know “I was required to go by the probation department, but that ran out four years ago.” So I tell them hey between now and the hearing date start going AA meetings and go a lot, two or three times a week showing good effort. To be honest, people sometimes resist going back to AA, but really that’s the key to being successful at the hearing because I when I prep you for your hearing I ask a lot of AA type questions. So you definitely got to bone up on that a little bit
