How to escape DMV hell unscathed
One of the stranger side effects of the COVID pandemic is that it’s created a whole new kind of criminal.
Nope, not the people who refuse to wear masks in Walmart. It’s the people who have bought cars since COVID struck and who are driving around on expired “temporary” tags because they can’t get an appointment at the DMV.
Next time you go driving, look closely at people’s temporary tags. Most of them are expired. The police don’t even bother to pull them over because they know how hard it is to get a DMV appointment.
And in three months, or six or whenever the DMV opens up again, they’ll still be driving on these tags for weeks to come because there will be a line from the courthouse to the lake for the rest of the year.
It’s not like any of these people want to be criminals; they’d be happy to pay their registration fees and get their metal plates. But they can’t, so they don’t. What’s worse is that because DMV also issues vehicle titles, none of these individuals legally own their car. It’s a weird sort of limbo the virus has put us in.
Simply put, Idaho’s DMV system is broken. It was broken before the pandemic, and it’s worse now — because every Idahoan who buys a car must visit the DMV in person to register it and get the VIN inspected.
It’s kind of a tradition in Idaho that when you buy a car, you take a day off work and stand in a very long line at a government office to make your car legal to be on the road. In our busy world, no one has time for that.
It doesn’t have to be this way. In many states, auto dealers are allowed to file the DMV paperwork for their customers. Idaho needs to adopt this system. And since the Legislature just opened its 2021 session, this is the perfect time to do it.
Start with a secured website auto dealers could log into and file documents for their customers. They’d take a photo of the car’s manufacturer data plate with the camera we all have in our phones, type in a few lines of information and electronically transfer the fees and data plate photo to the state. No muss, no fuss, no mile-long line.
The vehicle owner would receive his or her title and plates in the mail in a week or so. It would be simple and efficient, just like in the other states that already do it.
It would streamline the DMV to not have to deal with so many customers in person. It would make the driver’s life easier to not have to take a day off work to visit the DMV.
It might slightly increase employment because the big car dealerships would hire license and title clerks. In fact, the state economy would receive a nice little boost because more local car shoppers would be encouraged to buy from Idaho dealers.
Of all the things our new Legislature could do to improve the lives of Idahoans, this is a big one, with plenty of benefits and no downside. It’s an idea whose time came 20 years ago, and it needs to come to the Gem State in 2021.
— Jim Mowreader