Like Georgia, Virginia has cleaned up it’s act. DMV is usually hassle free, if expensive. You can talk to the clerks and they reply with some sense. A joy after using the Connecticut system.
GA is not the example to use.
I got a speeding ticket 23 years before and paid it. My license was originally from another state and when I went to get it renewed, I could not because it had been suspended without my knowledge and the reason was for an unpaid ticket. I called the previous state and they told me it was for a ticket received on the old state license that was not paid and they gave me the ticket number. I called the county office and a very helpful county clerk researched the archives and faxed me the receipt for the ticket. and I sent it off to the first state to settle it but that was not good enough. They had to have the county fax it to them. I arranged it and they faxed it off. i had to call the office again to get my license, the one that I have not renewed in over 20 years, reinstated. After that GA released my license and I could get it renewed.
What happened was the records were being uploaded into the electronic database and the temp worker who was keying in the data did not bother to get the fact that the ticket was paid for.
Fast forward six years and the same thing happened again for another ticket that was 23 years old. I was pulled over and they ran my license and found I had a warrant and was promptly arrested for a ticket that was 23 years old. They demanded the paid receipt of which I no longer had and I had to pay the ticket - $170 before they would release me. They wanted to extradite me to the county that had the ticket and put me before the judge there. If I had not paid the ticket, there would have been a warrant for my arrest 23 years ago and a contempt of court charge and there was no record of that but they proceeded anyway.
There is no statue of limitations on a speeding ticket because it involves a missed court date.
It was the same situation as the first and they had some temp worker entering in archive data into the national database and it flagged the ticket as unpaid and I lost two days work because I was in jail for a clerical error and had to repay a ticket from 23 years before.
The same incident occurred the next day with a man who was arrested for an unpaid ticket and he even had the receipt on his person but they would not accept it as the payment was not entered into the database as paid because of a clerical error.