The DMV is good now, actually

By Nathaniel Meyersohn, CNN

New York (CNN) — Matthew Clayton is good at computers, so he gets assigned a dreaded task by his family members: helping them schedule their DMV appointments online in North Carolina.

North Carolina’s Division of Motor Vehicles has long been considered among the worst of the worst. “It’s as broken as everyone thinks it is,” the agency’s commissioner said last year.

The last time Clayton’s dad renewed his driver’s license, back in 2018, he waited for five hours in line at the office.

“Having a bad experience at DMV makes you really not want to deal with local government,” Clayton said.

But something surprising is happening. The DMV doesn’t suck anymore.

States have modernized their ancient technology and websites. Many now let you reserve appointments, upload documents and renew licenses online. Others have added extra staff to offices and stationed self-service kiosks in supermarkets. Agencies post on TikTok and run clever PSAs with Rob Gronkowski. DMV leaders use private sector strategies and the language of “customer experience” like they’re running Target stores.

Clayton’s mom, grandfather and dad all recently had smooth experiences with North Carolina’s DMV.

Thanks to a new state law, Clayton’s mom easily renewed her driver’s license online in the spring without needing to go in person. His grandfather booked a renewal appointment online a couple of months later and had an easy trip.

Even his dad had an easy time. Clayton helped him make an online appointment at the DMV in July. His dad arrived an hour early for his afternoon appointment. But just two people were ahead of him, and he was done in 10 minutes. He went to run errands and arrived back home by his scheduled appointment.

“My dad said it was the easiest and stress-free time at the DMV ever,” according to Clayton.

Lampooned on The Simpsons

It’s easy to overlook the DMV, but it’s the face of state government. Nearly everyone needs something from the DMV at some point in life. It’s the first interaction most teenagers have with a government employee who is not their teacher.

Perceptions of the DMV as slow and bureaucratic from “The Simpsons” and “Zootopia” are outdated.

DMV wait times are falling drastically around the country. In Michigan, they fell from an average of several hours in some offices in 2019 to under 20 minutes last year. They’ve dropped nearly 80% in Virginia since 2019 to an average of 8 minutes.

North Carolina has transformed its DMV since the bad days of 2024, when the deadline to get a REAL ID approached and a rush of people overwhelmed offices. State lawmakers grilled the DMV commissioner for three hours in a February 2024 hearing for the “abysmal in all caps” experiences people were having.

The state’s problems had been building up for years. Millions of people moved into North Carolina during the pandemic. Meanwhile, DMV workers left or retired, and lawmakers starved the department of funds.

But the legislature changed the law to allow hundreds of thousands of residents to renew their licenses online, saving them an in-person visit. It approved funds to hire drivers’ license examiners, open new field offices and replace old document scanners.

Under a new commissioner since last year, North Carolina redesigned its DMV website, offering quizzes to help people bring the right documents and displaying live wait times for appointments. When people show up in person, they can get alerts on their phones while they wait, much as they would at a restaurant.

The average wait time at North Carolina’s DMV offices was 23 minutes in August, down 86% from last year.

North Carolina residents appear to have noticed the changes. They’re posting on Reddit about their shocking experiences at DMV offices.

“A Fortune 500 company would have been proud,” one said about a trip to a DMV in rural Hickory.

“We’re the front door of state government,” said North Carolina DMV Commissioner Paul Tine, a former state legislator with a background in the insurance industry. “If we’re not delivering the service in the way the modern customer expects, they’re going to have a negative feeling about state government in general.”

Confidence in government

There’s no single reason why DMV visits became a nightmare and the agency turned into a national punching bag.

Part of the problem is that every state has an entirely different model for administering services. Some states have centralized systems, and others are run at the local level.

In Idaho, for example, DMV decisions are made independently in each of its 44 counties by 88 sheriffs and assessors. The number of DMV staff and offices differ by county and don’t always correspond to an area’s population or customer demand, said Matthew May, a research scholar at Boise State University’s Idaho Policy Institute who has studied the state’s DMV operations.

The DMV’s responsibilities are also much broader than just drivers’ licenses and vehicle registration. The agency has been pulled into voter registration, organ donation, firearms, and dozens of other functions, all of which are piled onto a shrinking workforce.

Sebastian Jilke has been interested in DMVs since he arrived in America 15 years ago from Germany.

His first experience with the US government was a trip to the DMV in Newark, New Jersey, to get his license. He waited three hours. Soon after, he visited an office in a suburban part of the state and had a quick trip. He was stunned by the difference.

Now a professor of public policy at Georgetown University, Jilke and a colleague recently analyzed Google reviews on New Jersey’s DMV offices for a research paper on “administrative deserts” — areas where government services systematically underperform despite offices and staff.

DMV experiences are often better in wealthier communities, where residents may have more political power, they found. Offices serving clients with limited English proficiency and more complex document histories perform worse. They contrasted DMVs with McDonald’s, where experiences are typically similar across locations.

Going to the DMV is not just a bureaucratic encounter, Jilke said. It’s how people experience government. If DMVs can become more efficient, people’s trust in the public sector may grow.

“DMVs are mundane, but they are consequential.”

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