MAYVILLE, N.Y. — If you renewed your driver's license online during the pandemic and self-certified your vision, you might be about to get a warning letter in the mail from the DMV.
The Chautauqua County Clerk says if you don't get the right paperwork sent in, your license could be suspended.
"During the pandemic, the state, in order to make things easy on people, allowed people to renew their driver's licenses online without getting an eye test," Chautauqua County Clerk Larry Barmore said.
Instead, from March 1, 2020 until August 31, 2021, people could self-certify and agree to have an eye doctor send an eye test form to Albany within a year.
"And now they've reached a point where all these people's licenses have gone past the year of renewal time, and they haven't received the eye test," Barmore said.
The Chautauqua County Clerk says he got an email from Albany on Wednesday morning, saying the state is about to send warning letters to 150,000 New Yorkers who need to get this done.
"What they need to do is either go to an eye doctor who is on the state's list of approved eye doctors. He'll take the eye test and send it in electronically to Albany, and then it's all done, or they can come into a DMV office and do the same thing. We can give them the eye test, and we'll handle all the rest of it for them sending it to Albany," Barmore said.
He says the third option is to go to an eye doctor who is not approved by Albany. They would need to fill out a form for you, and then you would have to send it to Albany yourself. If you don't do it soon, you risk having your driver's license suspended.