A Burlingame man with eight DUIs still had a valid driver's license when he got his ninth in January because he apparently never hurt or killed anyone and many of his previous convictions were outside a 10-year cutoff period used by the Department of Motor Vehicles to assess drivers, a department official explained Monday.

A Bay Area legislator called the case of 42-year-old William Simon - first detailed Monday in a Bay Area News Group article - "irresponsible and outrageous," but a director of the California DUI Lawyers Association said habitual drunken drivers will take to the streets with or without a license.

Under California law, drunken drivers have to hurt or kill someone before their licenses can be permanently revoked, DMV spokeswoman Jan Mendoza said. Despite DUI convictions dating back to 1985, William Simon, 42, has nothing on his record indicating that he hurt or killed anyone while over the limit and behind the wheel, she said.

There is another route by which state officials can permanently strip repeat offenders of their licenses, but the driver must be deemed an alcoholic. However, drivers who lose their licenses this way can reobtain it if they prove they have broken their addiction.

"We have to leave that door open, because the condition could change," Mendoza said.

She declined to comment on whether Simon has ever been considered for an alcoholism revocation, because addiction is a regarded as an illness, she said, and privacy laws prohibit the release of a person's medical records. A copy of Simon's driving records detailing his five arrests over the past 10 years - provided by the DMV to Bay Area News Group - do not show that he was ever evaluated for an alcoholism revocation.

For drivers such as Simon, it is not easy to get a license back after multiple arrests. The cost of hiring special insurance required for those convicted of DUIs and court-ordered classes on the dangers of drunken driving serve as a deterrent for repeat offenders, many of whom never get their licenses back, officials said.

However, the DMV's practice of evaluating drivers based solely on their record from the previous 10 years means that older convictions are not taken into account if the driver reoffends. The penalty for nine DUIs in a decade would be much more severe than the consequences of nine over the course of 23 years, as is the case with Simon. For example, when Simon got his seventh DUI in July 2004, it was treated as being his third because the others fell outside the 10-year window.

Mendoza said that prosecutors and judges can take into account the previous convictions during sentencing, but the DMV does not. If all the previous convictions had been taken into account, he would have faced multiple years in prison and a minimum three-year revocation of his license. Instead, Simon got his driving privileges back in August 2008.

"The law is not written to allow us discretion," Mendoza said. "We can't say that this person would never get his license back."

State Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, has called for the creation of a law that would automatically strip multiple offenders of their licenses, and state Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, said the justice system has misfired by letting people with several DUI convictions get their license back.

"The fact that you have to wait for someone to hurt someone is outrageous," Hill said Monday. "It's the type of issue that requires more diligence."

However, Joshua Dale of the California DUI Lawyers Association said people who get multiple DUIs need treatment. These people are alcoholics, he said, and the small number who repeatedly reoffend will not be stopped by the loss of the driving privileges.

"If they are going to drive (while intoxicated), they are going to drive without a license," he said of multiple offenders.