That’s done as part of the driving test. Booking a test, and all the follow-up paperwork, including renewals, that’s all online.
So, you do have to go in?
The last time I was in-person at the DMV it was in the middle of Covid. I tried getting an appointment, but the closest offices to me were booked solid until after my birthday – which was months away. I had to settle for an appointment the day before my birthday at an office about 15-20 miles away.
But once I got there, even though it was jammed, all the staff were very polite and friendly. They guy who adminstered my eye test was funny and cracked me up. I left in a good mood.
Oh, and I went in person because I had to get my RealID.
You need one here; but while you can have it done at the DMV, I think you can also submit proof provided by an optometrist or opthamalogist, which if you see one anyway regularly is probably easier – yes, and while checking that (it’s a considerably longer list than optometrist or ophthamalogist, though they’re on it) I discovered that in NY you can indeed now do a vision test online. I don’t know how you prove that it’s you taking it, I didn’t look into it that far.
Do you expect people even in the private sector to bump to the head of the line people who “are all in a hurry, didn’t plan ahead, need to pick up their kids, or whatever”? And when there are “hundreds” of such people, how are they supposed to prioritize all of them over all of the others? And how long do you expect the wait to get for the occasional person who did plan ahead and doesn’t have any kids to pick up?
In the entirely private sector, I’ve seen plenty of mechanics’ shops with the sign up that says “Failure to plan ahead on your part does not constitute an emergency on our part.” The fact that there are people at BigMarts screaming at the clerks because they think that it ought to doesn’t actually improve the situation; it’s likely to make it worse because of the time needed to deal with the screaming. And to replace the clerk and train the new one, because the one who got screamed at once too often quit.
Do you need a driving test at every renewal?
I haven’t had to take one since I got my first license.
– I did go to the DMV in person last time, in order to get a RealID license. I think I also did so the times before that, as it seemed the easiest way to get the photo.
What I’m saying is that the usual customer satisfaction metrics don’t apply, and people can’t really vote with their wallets by patronizing other stores/restaurants. So there’s not really an incentive to be super customer-service oriented like there may be in a lot of private sector jobs.
Here in Texas, I think you’ve got to renew in-person every 16 years (new photo, new eye exam) - the wording is something like “You’re eligible to renew on line if (among other criteria), your last renewal was in-person at the DMV”, which I’m interpreting to mean that every other renewal is in person. A renewal is good for eight years.
It use to be consistently time consuming but in the last 5-10 years it has improved greatly. And they now offer the ability to double the time the license is valid (at twice the price). My last license renewal took 5 minutes.
They’ve gone to a single point of contact when you walk in and that seems to greatly speed things up. They can check your eyesight or get you the right paperwork.
I have mentioned this story elsewhere but here goes again.
A high school friend of mine married a career Air Force guy and had to change locations several times. Never had any DMV troubles until they transferred from Alaska to Texas. In the Texas DMV it was made plain why changing the license would be a hassle. More driving tests, more proofs of insurance, you name it. Turns out the clerk didn’t believe Alaska was a US state and was giving her the extra runaround because “we don’t take licenses from foreigh countries.”
I’ve never had any issues or irritations at the DMV (it’s now the BMV in Ohio). But I’ve seen people online say the one closest to me is particularly good. People will come out here to use it instead of the one closer to them.
I didn’t start dealing with the DMV until 1995, at which time I remember it was a bit more chaotic (also there wasn’t one near me), and I agree with @doreen that computerization must have been a huge boon for their reputation.
When I first moved out here (1983), the DMV was pretty bad.
Since then, there have been two major changes that have improved car-related transactions greatly:
- There are now third-party title locations. They charge more than the DMV, but they are much, much faster.
- For many of the functions the DMV performs, you can now make a timed reservation. When I got my new license (and then upgraded it to “real ID,” I made a reservation, walked in at the specified time, and was out again in 15 minutes.
No.
When I took my driving test, the eyesight test was just a matter of the examiner stopping you on the way to your car and asking you to read a number plate of (any other) car the required distance away.
Since then (50+ years on) no formal re-testing of skill or vision - you’re on your honour to report any issues (and at risk of penalty from the law and/or your insurance if you have an accident as a result).
I should say, the driving test centre’s operations are separate from the office/paperwork: that’s all held in one centre for the whole country and done online as much as possible (though I believe Post Offices can provide and help check paper forms).
You’ve hit on something key, but IMO you’re looking at too low of a level.
The larger issue is supply and demand. Which signals are legendary in the private sector but are largely absent in the public sector. E.g.:
If your county has the demand to support 10,000 place settings in restaurants at lunchtime, that’s about how many the private sector will provide. If there’s not enough, more restaurants will magically open as wannabe restauranteurs see the underserved opportunity. And if too many, some restaurants will magically close as wannabe restauranteurs lose their ass with too much cost and not enough revenue. It’s dynamic albeit not instant and certainly not perfect.
Contrast that with the DMV. Your county has demand for 1,000 people to visit the DMV per day. The state legislature allocates enough money to supply office space and clerks sufficient to service 500 per day. Tough shit citizens, that’s all you get.
Bottom line:
I’ve said it many times in many contexts about the entire executive branch of the feds, the states, the counties, the cities: There is no legal or logical requirement that any department get the resources it needs to do the job it’s been given. None.
That disconnect is universal in government. It can occur in private industry, but is self-limiting as the under-resourced department slowly kills the company it’s embedded in, or management wakes up and fixes it with more resources. In government, shit just goes un-done until …
You’re right- that’s a huge aspect. They only have so many people on the roster for that particular office or department, and they can’t hire more, they can’t pay more overtime, etc. because it’s not in the budget.
A lot of it is in the way government spending works. It’s very different than a private sector company, where there’s no oversight save the board/shareholders, and where they’re not constrained by cost control rules and competitive purchasing requirements, etc. If a private company needs to staff up and get more computers for their public facing division, they just do it. There’s nobody to tell them they can’t.
Public entities have to go to the elected officials (state legislature, city council, etc.) for approval on things that aren’t in the budget, they’ve got to go through some sort of convoluted and ridiculous competitive bid process or go through specific vendors who may or may not have the capacity to support the request, and they’ve got to adhere to some very strict hiring guidelines.
All this means that they can expand their customer service divisions, but it’s a slow process, and that’s assuming the political folks actually care. If they don’t, and it’s not in the budget, it’s not going to happen. The civil service people are pretty limited in how they can shuffle the money around because funds are budgeted for specific purposes.
In Tennessee, the single classification of State Employees most likely to be subject to On-The-Job violence is Drivers License Examiner 2.
The highest turnover is in Driver’s License Examiner 1.
These two positions are the best-paid State Government jobs that do not require a degree.
But you certainly seemed to mean, by “customer-service oriented”, being obsequious and prioritizing customers who claimed to be in a hurry, to need to pick up their kids, and who hadn’t planned ahead. Those were the examples you gave.
And those examples, though I grant some businesses expect them of employees, don’t actually improve customer service. They may improve it for an occasional customer who behaves badly; but they make it worse for all the customers who are behaving properly.
Now that point makes sense.
There are public sector signals; but they often don’t come across well, as people tend to grumble to each other and/or snarl at the DMV clerks instead of determinedly yelling at their representatives about it. And of course they have to pick the right representatives to yell at.
Most of the complaints about most government bureaucracies are not about inherently surly (or even non-obsequious) workers. It’s about the inadequacy of supply such that long lines are part of the process. Or, as mentioned upthread, appointments that are available but the first vacancy is 2 months from now. Such that if you have a last minute need to cancel, your next opportunity is 2 months after that.
The challenge is getting effective political support behind an effort that amounts to “Let’s raise taxes to fund more DMV workers!” That one is a hard sell to the right or the left.
In all fairness, Texans believe all of the United States is a foreign country.
It wasn’t bad in Oregon, nor is it bad here in MSP. Much of what you need is done by mail, and in MSP you need an appointment to take the written test, which can be several months away. My only gripe here is that you have to pay to renew your tags every year instead of every two years, but at least there is no emissions test to gouge that extra hundred bucks out of you for no good reason. If we were all still driving 40 year old cars, I could understand it, but emission controls have been in place for a long time.
It probably depends on which DMV office you use, but at my local DMV all the appointment slots can fill up over a month in advance. So if you know you need to go to the DMV in person you’d better plan well ahead.
They don’t, however, last forever without needing repairs in any given vehicle.
Here in NY an inspection is $21, though; which includes the emissions test. If your vehicle flunks, of course, that’s a whole other matter.
My experiences in the two states where I’ve been licensed to drive (Missouri and Illinois) have been no better or no worse than what I would have gotten from any other government agency – which is to say, understaffed, long(ish) wait, mostly-polite workers who are doing their best in a difficult environment.
Truthfully, I’ve found the patrons to be far more hateful than the workers. I remember one time in Illinois, someone wanted to do his behind-the-wheel test and his dog was in the vehicle. The tester stated, politely and repeatedly, that he couldn’t administer the test if there was an animal in the vehicle. The applicant treated this as a personal insult, and he offered every excuse in the book and, when that failed, got downright hostile. I do feel for the guy – he was obviously homeless and living out of his truck and probably couldn’t have afforded to board his dog even for an hour or so. But, rules is rules, I guess.
I just wanted to assure everybody that I am reading, enjoying and learning from your posts in this thread. I haven’t responded earlier because I didn’t have anything to add. Thanks, for reading and replying!