Losing My Virginianity
Today I traded in my Virginia driver license for a North Carolina one. The upside is that I now have documentation to prove I am either a bona fide resident of the Tar Heel State or an illegal alien. The downside is that my only remaining connection to the Old Dominion - and thus, the only continuing justification for my membership in ODBA - is that I still own a house there, at least for now. That, plus the fact that I no longer have the rare privilege of living in a commonwealth rather than a state, for whatever good that does.
The trips to the DMV was interesting. Note I said trips, not trip. My first trip was yesterday, when I found out the hard way that you can’t get a driver’s license in NC without having auto insurance. Of course I had insurance, but with Mercury, which is not admitted in NC so it didn’t count. I came back today, with a new policy in hand, wondering how on earth anyone who doesn’t own a car can get licensed. I waited in line, got a number entitling me to wait in another line, took the world’s weirdest eye exam followed by two computerized tests, and paid my $46. That sounds like a lot until you consider that they charge by the year, and the license doesn’t expire until 2015. Then they asked me to pick my favorite design for the license, which was kinda weird, before having my picture taken. The weirdest part, from an ex-Californian’s perspective (though apparently normal to just about anyone else) was actually getting the friggin’ license, and not some cheesy temporary substitute, 5 minutes after they took the photo. Actually, I wasn’t too weirded out by that, having gotten the same in Virginia last year and in Illinois in the early 1990s. Is Kalifornia the only state whose DMV is too incompetent to issue real licenses on the spot?
November 15th, 2007 at 10:32 am
Is Kalifornia the only state whose DMV is too incompetent to issue real licenses on the spot?
No MinneOhSoKolda takes 3 or 4 weeks.
November 15th, 2007 at 11:45 am
$46 sounds like a lot? You wouldn’t have thought so if you’d got a job in Oregon.
November 15th, 2007 at 1:42 pm
heh. Did you also go get the car registered? That’s a separate trip…. usually to another place altogether….
November 15th, 2007 at 3:35 pm
They don’t maintain an ex-pat category like the Bear Flag League?
November 15th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
I got my Georgia license (10-year renewal just two weeks ago) with about a five-minute wait after the camera-flash. I think my Alaska license in 1994 was likewise nearly instant, but I’m not positive.
I have to admit even I’m surprised The Fugue State still can’t provide a real license within minutes.
November 15th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Congrats on the job!
November 19th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Pennsylvania has outsourced automobile tags and registration to private notaries public, so they do a good job. The resulting reduced workload has made the Departments of Motor Vehicles with which I have dealt somewhat less painful.
As for Virginia, at least in the city of Hampton, the DMV on Mercury Boulevard is an Affirmative Action employer for special education students.
November 19th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
NC does something similar. I was in and out of the registration place in about 10 mins.
November 22nd, 2007 at 11:31 pm
You are aware that in North Carolina you have to get a permit to purchase a handgun? Not carry - PURCHASE. (At least you did when I last lived there in 1981.)
November 26th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
I am aware of that. It sucks, of course, but it’s not a huge deal in my case, as I plan to obtain a concealed handgun permit in the not-too-distant future, and a CHP obviates the need for a permit to purchase.
November 28th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
Iowa has had on-the-spot drivers licenses at least since I moved back in 1990. At that time, Arizona still gave a temporary paper one, then mailed the permanent one with the picture and photocopied application form that had been hand-written with pencil by the applicant.
When I renewed my Arizona license in 1984, I mistakenly put my DOB as 1984 and it wasn’t caught until 1988 when I went with my 16-year-old daughter to pick up a rental car in Colorado Springs. (They let me rent the car, even though the license said I was only four years old!)
December 2nd, 2007 at 8:42 am
the NC DMV worked very hard the last few years to really speed up the process to make it resident friendly. It used to take hours, at least in the bigger cities, to get a license. Took me about 15 last Tuesday (hadn’t noticed that it expired last July. Yikes!)
Of course, it could be because Gov Easley loves giving DL’s to illegal aliens.
Welcome to NC!
December 11th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
I tell new NC residents to do this before going to get their new license:
1. Call the office and ask them what you need to bring with you.
2. Call a different office and ask them the same question.
3. Bring everything both offices told you (for some reason, you’ll never get the same answer). Then if you’re lucky, you’ll have everything you need after waiting in line with 200 mexicans.