Saturday, I received notification that I was in violation of Maryland’s car insurance requirements, because as of 7/1, I did not have an insurance policy on the car I had donated to charity back in May.
The basic cause of this problem is that when I cancelled the insurance on the car, a week later, after turning in the plates, as they say you are supposed to do, the insurance company back-dated the cancellation.
This was a learning experience for me, so I will pose the particulars of the scenario for you, gentle readers, that you might see for yourself how to donate a car to charity. If you get into trouble, ask your math teacher to help you.
Your goal is to give the car to charity without violating any laws. Any law you can not prove to have not violated will be assumed to have been violated.
- Postulates
- You can’t park a car on the street without plates
- You can’t have an insurance policy on a car you don’t own
- You can’t cancel your insurance policy until you turn in your plates
- The street is the only place to park your car when the charity comes to collect it
- The charity gives you documentation of the date you signed the agreement to give them your car, not when they took possession of it.
- If you leave the fox and the hen on the same side of the river unattended, the fox will eat the hen.
- At the DMV, one clerk always lies and one always tells the truth. You can only ask one clerk one question. Preferably “Could you cancel my registration and take these plates back please?”
And just to keep up the charade, the solution is below the fold…
Continue reading A Logic Puzzle, or How Raymond Smullyan And I Ended Up Owing $150 to the MVA