In most states, it’s considered very unpleasant to have to go to the DMV.
Where I used to live, in the Washington, D.C., area, they’ve started using “DMV” to describe the area (District, Maryland and Virginia), a term that makes it even less likely that I will ever live there again.
In Georgia, where I live, there’s no such thing as the DMV. And if you think about it, the way we do it here seems far more logical. DMV stands for Department of Motor Vehicles, which of course sounds like it’s more about the cars than the drivers.
We solve that problem here, but it creates an acronym that already had somewhat of an unpleasant connotation.
Department of Driver Services.
Yup, DDS.
I was getting ready to go to the DDS, because my license expires Friday and is due for a five-year renewal. If life is an 18-hole golf course, I’m approaching the 16th green. Since I’m that far along, I can’t renew my license by mail. At my age, I’m required to go to the DDS and take an eye test.
Silly me, I figured I’d just go in Thursday and do it, leaving Friday in case there was some sort of snag.
Uh …
I started thinking about the pandemic. I’m familiar with our local DDS office, and it is not a large room.
So I went to the web page and saw that because of the pandemic, we were required to make appointments 60 days in advance.
Oops.
Then I saw another website — this one a television news site — with an article from last spring saying that drivers past the age of 60 were being given an extension of 120 days to renew their licenses.
Huh.
So I’ll call in the morning to see if the extension is still in affect. If it is, I can make better plans.
If not, I can beg.
Oh, and I did see one interesting thing that doesn’t really affect me. I’ve had drivers licenses in seven different states, and they do different things to make it tougher for underage drinkers to fake their ID. One state did photos of younger drivers in black and white, another put younger drivers in profile.
Not bad, but I think Georgia does the best job.
If you’re under 21, your license is vertical.
Not bad.