(Photo: AP Photo/Lisa Billings
The Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles suspended Ashlee Owens’s license. It said that it did not have proof of her car insurance. Ms. Owens insisted that the DMV was wrong and that she had mailed it in. She made a good faith effort to resolve the problem over the phone. But the DMV kept her waiting on hold for very long periods, then hung up on her.
Over and over again.
Ms. Owens was sick of it all and decided to head down to the local DMV office to resolve the issue in person. But she was no longer legally able to drive.
So she rode her horse:
It was illegal for her to drive all the way from her home in Amelia, to Richmond, so Ashlee had a friend drive her to Richmond with a horse trailer...and that's when Ashlee, Sassy and her dog, Tuff, had their protest parade.
Ashley left Sassy and Tuff, for a tough battle. $645 dollars in fees, just to get her license back. While she was inside, the DMV came outside. Drawing a crowd of people who said, now, they've seen everything at the DMV. And after two hours…victory.
"I went in. The lady that's the head of DMV came and found me and she asked me if I was the lady with the horse outside and said ‘well come over here'. Took me to the side and she took all my paperwork upstairs and handled it immediately and sent me on my way," Ashlee said.
-via Jalopnik
The original high fees were probably because she drove for X-number of days when DMV believed she wasn't covered by insurance. In order to get her driving privileges restored she had to either pay a huge fee OR turn over her plates for the same number of days she was (considered) uninsured.
But cool story... arriving on horseback with her trusty dog!