Understanding California’s Motor Swap Laws

Among the most complex issues related to California’s motor swap laws is the significance of the word “and”. For example, an Oldsmobile hood on an Oldsmobile chassis with a Chevy engine will likely fail to be legal in many instances unless the DMV engine number matches the chassis number. These sorts of issues are frequently complex and appear to be the most difficult aspect of California’s motor swap laws to understand and implement, so there are several approaches to try and get the information across to you in such a way you can not only understand it, but implement it correctly. It is perhaps useful to start with the Center for Applied Linguistics, who specialize in language education and research, and see some of the principles behind those studies. What I feel is important about California’s motor swap laws is that they are very similar to learning a language. What interests me about the Center for Applied Linguistics is that they are able to take some of the information from applied linguistics and distill it into useful bits so that people interacting with them (teachers, students and policy makers) will be able to incorporate the knowledge easily into their own lives.

What I feel I can integrate with legal language or legalese is to transform the technical subject into efficiently organized bits of information which can be easily understood and duplicated. By examining our own interactions with various aspects of technical language in our day to day activities, as California’s motor swap laws are a highly technical subject, this is a challenge both for me and for you as an educator.

One area where I might talk a little about a successful motor swap in California might help some individuals is in the area of factual details behind various motor swap regulations. California’s laws are highly specific, so I might inquire as to how are we going to remember all these details? (You get the prize if you came up with “flash cards” or “mnemonics”!).

Let us not forget, however, that learning to navigate California’s motor swap laws is almost a language in and of itself. To read through the motor vehicle code is much like learning a second languages: it takes time, effort and memorization, and repetition is the only way you will be able to learn every single detail.

In fact, I have even mentioned before that there was a language school at one point where the teacher was law enforcement officer that taught the motorcycle safety course, and so he treated the program like a language class: lots of direct observation of materials, lots of repeated observations of the same materials, lots of review, lots of exercises and practice afterwards, and less time spent on lectures and the like.

In other words, an engaged student will not only succeed in classroom quizzes and tests, they will also retain knowledge long into the future beyond the classroom environment, because the individual is actively engaged in his or her studies.

If you are going to make a complex piece of legislation like California’s motor swap laws understandable to someone with no background whatsoever, then you should invest roughly the same amount of time and resources that you would in creating a new language, as the statutory text is reserved for and designed for attorneys of the highest order.

You can go here for more information on comprehensive California motor swap regulations; its a 3 page PDF file that goes over the various requirements, and goes into depth over what is and is not illegal; it has a few examples (from 3500 pounds to 5000 pounds) that may help you understand California’s motor swap laws better than before.