The Knight Life by Keith Knight for April 03, 2024

Back when the DMV rolled out the new RealID licenses, the newspapers were full of articles about how difficult it was, and how long it took, with horror stories of people having to spend the entire day waiting in lines at the DMV. So I did my homework—went online and found out all the documentation I needed, and the prep I needed to do, downloaded and studied the manual, and took all the sample tests. Then, when all my ducks were in a row, I made an appointment online, showed up at the DMV with all the required paperwork a few minutes early, walked past all the people without appointments, stood in a 2-person line for 3 minutes, then was shuttled from station to station over the course of the next half-hour until I walked out of the DMV tested and photographed, with my new temporary license in hand, exactly 35 minutes after I walked in. I didn’t even need a bathroom break, and thus no need for clean underwear LOL.

Last time I had to go to the DMV was in the middle of the Covid epidemic, involved standing outside in 40 degree weather for 2 hours, followed by being told had to come back 5 hours later for photo, that’s why my driver’s license photo looks like that.

I can honestly say I’ve never had a bad experience at DMV, and never spent more than an hour there.