Inspired by something in another thread: it seems to be a common belief in the US that the DMV is extremely slow/incompetent/bureaucratic, and I’ve seem plenty of Americans complain about it over the years. Living in the UK, I’ve never had a problem with our equivalent the DVLA, and haven’t noticed any general complaints. So what are the problems with the DMV and why have they seemingly not been fixed for decades?
It’s more old trope than current reality IME. There have been real reforms during my lifetime that make the experience less annoying than when I was younger. Things like more convenient hours for those with common daytime jobs or in school and online/mail processing have made real differences. There can still be busy times with longer waits because they’ve also reduced staff some in the states I’ve lived in. It’s my tax money paying the workers so there’s a real trade off.
I was still in Michigan during the two terms where Candice Miller served as Secretary of State. She was the first Republican to win that statewide office and take responsibility for among other things overseeing vehicle registration and licensing. She enacted the reforms she ran on in 1994. People liked them. In 1998 she won every single county in the state including the ones where a pet rock that managed to get the Democratic nomination would likely win. That victory was by a record setting vote margin. People really did like the changes she enacted. Then we got used to the changes… and started bitching again.
I think part of it is a difference in culture about queuing up and being patient with waiting. I wouldn’t be surprised if levels of dissatisfaction with the DVLA went way up if they were serving an American audience.
Remember also that each state has it’s own DMV (not always called “DMV”), so there are 50 of them, all independent of each other. Some are undoubtedly better than others.
I know my local DMVs have gotten much more efficient. But that can still mean waiting around for a half hour instead of an hour.
As for why they so terrible, IMO, it’s because their run by the government (hear me out, this isn’t an anti-gov rant). The thing is (and this is all IMO), there’s no competition. No one at the DMV, nor those above them, care how long you have to wait. If you need to do something there, eventually you’re going to find the time to stop in and wait around.
If, IMO, they privatized it, I think it would make a world of difference. Look at it this way, the DMV charges, for example) $100 to stop in and renew your license. Imagine if they privatized it and told the businesses that for every DL renewal, they have to send the DOT $75 (how much they could charge people would be a different topic). Now, you can go to the DMV and wait around for 20 minutes, or you could stop at the other DMV nearby because you know they do a much better job and you can be in and out in 5 minutes. In other words, there would be some competition between the locations to satisfy the people stopping in and, at least in (my) theory, the ‘customers’ would be the real winners.
A few other thoughts:
1)Everyone with a DL, everyone that has a car, everyone that has some motorized vehicle need, has to stop in at some point or another. With that many people, day in and day out, it’s going to slow things down.
2)At least in my state, they’ve been very slow to move some of these things to the internet. Things that you could do online, require a visit.
3)Many of the forms can be hard to understand, that slows things down. Also, there’s a lot of paperwork, at least for some of the things you need to do.
I’m sure I can come up with more reasons, but I still think privatizing it would speed everything up.
I’ve never had to wait more than five minutes to renew my license or registration at the BMV, even at lunch hour. With the sole exception of that one time I got stuck behind some joker trying to get plate for the possibly home-built trailer for which he had neither title nor basic statistics (like empty weight.) I wasn’t mad, though, because I’m glad that the BMV people kept that potential piece of shit off the road.
The BMV is a white collar job for working class people. Middle/upper class people tend to get bent out of shape when they have to wait in line to see a working class person who may have a modicum of power over them.
Every time I have had to get my license renewed (in two different states) I have had to wait multiple hours. I suspect that’s because the bureau is understaffed. With the new RealID being required now (extra paperwork, yay!), I’ve heard it’s gotten even worse. Not looking forward to my next visit. Fortunately that’s the only time my current state that requires a visit - registration renewals can be done online.
That already exists in Arizona. There are a independent shops that can do 90% of what the DMV does, for a markup of 20-50%.
They are convenient, but not always that much faster than the actual DMV.
FWIW, when I got my “Real ID” driver’s license, I was able to make a reservation at the DMV online, and go to a counter without any significant wait.
I have to say that all my interactions with the Oregon DMV have been painless and pretty quick. I think the longest wait I’ve ever had was 45 minutes but it was a busy day and I made the mistake of hitting one of the high traffic offices. Now I have two or three offices I go to, all in much quieter parts of town and I generally fly right through. Plus they did us all a great service and if you need to take your car through a smog check at DEQ and it passes and you have your mailed out form in hand you pay for it all right there and get your stickers and that has diverted a ton of interactions away from the DMV offices that now handle stuff that might actually need some expertise whereas registration is utterly routine.
Its more just people bitching about the government. I’ve found the DMV to function fine.
If anything, its gotten a lot better now that you can do everything online. But even when you had to do it in person, it wasn’t bad.
That’s another thing I meant to mention, online reservations.
First everyone replying here has to mention what state they are dealing with their DMV in. I am in Northern VA where they studied how many DMVs they needed … and then created about 1/3 that number. They are awful here and just about 2 months ago I had to get my license renewed (real ID) and it was all of 3 hours.
When I got there on a Friday morning - 20 minutes before they opened there was already a line out the door waiting. I have tried during the week for other stuff - not early and find that getting there early afternoon on Monday - Wednesday helps but I had someplace to go so I went on a Friday.
Now this area is one of the more dense in the country and we really really like our cars here so there is that.
As someone mentioned upthread there is no competition and since everything is persnickety (they mail the license to you from a central location instead of doing it there- is this common?) and rigid the employees seem more worried about making making an error vs getting you out the door.
Now for certain things - say turning back in a license plate or something like that they would probably speed you through.
Here in Illinois, too, it’s the responsibility of the Secretary of State, and AFAIK it’s run pretty well. Maybe it helps when there’s one specific politician whom people can blame or praise for their experiences.
I’m in California, and have never waited long. In fact my DMV experience has been better on average than my experience at getting a cellphone at a Verizon store.
One time I went for a license renewal, which required a picture, the clerk supervising pulled people out of line to give us our eye tests so that we could make good use of the wait time. Not bad for a government employee, eh?
It seems that not making an appointment for a RealID (which you can’t blame the states for) is a bad move. I just got my renewal and am going to make an appointment. Responses in the traffic column in the Murky News seem to indicate doing that makes for a smooth trip.
I got my first license 50 years ago in New York. That was a real nightmare. It’s been uphill since then.
This appears to be a perfect example of ‘an anecdote does not equal data’. It’s not like we’re making this up.
And it can depend on what area you’re in within the state.
I’ve never had any problem, or any wait more than a few minutes, in my low-population county (New York State, in case you didn’t look at my location). I’ve heard of people having long lines in some of the bigger cities, though it occurs to me that I don’t know how common that is.
I’d like to think if the BMV were a national entity instead of each state having their own rules, it would be more standardized. I buy and sell a few cars a year as a hobby, and the different title requirements between the states is annoying. I can’t imagine moving between states and having to transfer licenses etc. Working within my state is relatively painless, however.
The online reservation system for our area (Long Island, just outside NYC) doesn’t help much. 3 years ago I had to take one of my kids for his learner permit test and even with a reservation that we made 4 days ahead, the process took over 3 hours. Another kid needed a permit a few weeks ago and the first reservation available was over 2 weeks ahead–and that was when we were able to access the reservation page for the DMV locations near us that offer the permit test. We tried to access it many times and got messages saying that no appointments were available for places near us.
Another annoying aspect of DMV for us is that learner permit testing is not available at the DMV 5 minutes away from us. Instead we have to go to offices 20-30 minutes away.
I just tried the online reservation system again. Even though it says on the “Reserve a time at DMV” page to “Make a reservation online before visiting offices in New York City, Westchester, Nassau, Suffolk, Rockland, or Onondaga Counties”, the menu does not include a single one of the Nassau county offices. So basically it’s saying that this is the page for Nassau reservations but not providing any way to reserve.
Of course, there are other DMV offices in our state that work well. One kid took their learner permit test at a small DMV in the Catskills and the process took 20 minutes or less.
IME it’s that their operations just aren’t staffed enough to cope with the sheer number of people who need to make use of their services every day. Waiting my turn has always been the longest part of a visit to a SoS center; once it was my turn I was outta there within 5-10 minutes.
It helps now that most basic tasks (renew tags, order plates, etc.) can be done online. Also many car dealerships participate in a program where they can handle issuing/transferring you a plate and registration on behalf of the SoS when you buy a new car.
Not really. All my dealings with the DVLA have either been online or through the post office. When I needed to renew my drivers licence I filled in a form online and paid £14. I didn’t even have to send them a photo, just tick a box to use the one in my biometric passport. I had to post them my old licence and received the new one a few days later. I was actually impressed by how easy it was and the fact they’ve joined up these databases, and it surely saves money for the government, too.
Car tax is also done online, and you can look up your registration in the database to check when it’s due. Buying or selling a car involves paper forms that you post to the DVLA.
Seems a lot of the issues are caused by making everyone go to a (busy) office in person. Does every state DMV make you do this? Why can’t they automate it?
The DMV* in Texas is pretty good. At least near me, they have a big, comfortable waiting room, en electronic number issuing machine (don’t know the name for it, but you get a ticket with your number and you’re sorted into car registration, title change, etc.) If it’s busy, it’s busy, but they move fast.
As long as I’ve lived here, you’ve been able to renew car tags at most grocery stores, so it’s a really simple transaction while you’re buying food (1-2 minutes at most). Now it’s online and even simpler. The only reason to visit the DMV is for something unusual, like changing a title, or your first registration in the state.
*It’s called DPS here.