It’s cliché to mock offices of motor vehicles. But I’d had mostly not-horrible experiences getting driver’s licenses and car tags.
Until now.
I’ve entered a bureaucratic morass so tangled and inflexible that I feel lost – as in done in by the DMV.
I’ll explain. And please stand. You’ll need space for your jaw to drop.
My wife and I moved recently from Louisiana to North Carolina and must get new driver’s licenses and car tags.
North Carolina and Louisiana don’t want us to, apparently. Here’s the tangled mess:
To get North Carolina driver’s licenses, we must show proof of North Carolina car insurance coverage.
To get new insurance, we first must title and register our cars in North Carolina – and thus must cancel our Louisiana license plates.
Yet Louisiana won’t let us do so until we show proof of North Carolina insurance coverage.
So: State 1 won’t let go until we show proof of the other’s insurance. State 2 won’t accept us until the other lets go.
It’s a tornado spinning two ways ’round. Simultaneously.
Our own DMV Doom Spiral.
Isn’t that a conundrum? It’s sure at least a con. The answer is just to buy a new car and start over. That’s what’s behind suck a morass.
North Carolina is notorious.
Damn, Jeff!
I don’t think it’s Louisiana’s business whether you have insurance in North Carolina or not. Sounds like the Nanny State!!