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1. "It's our pleasure to confuse you." It seems like everyone's got a DMV horror story.
Making sense of the DMV is an $11.5 million business for DMV.org, an unofficial guide to state rules and peccadilloes. The site gets five million visitors a month hoping to ace their next DMV visit.
2. "Your used car could be a ticking time bomb on wheels." Remember those pics of flooded car lots after Hurrican Katrina? You could end up buying one of those cars today and never know it. In the past five years, the number of flooded cars sold as "used" has doubled nationwide, according to Carfax. Unscrupulous sellers can buy them at auction, then replace the title at a D of MV office in another state by fudging the document, saying it's lost or re-titled in a state that doesn't recognize "flooded" as totaled. If you're buying a used car, have a mechanic inspect it first and screen the car's VIN through the free database at carfax.com/flood.
3. "When it comes to car theft, we're part of the problem." There's another way criminals take advantage of flimsy DMV car records: "VIN cloning," a kind of vehicle laundering. A stolen car's vehicle-identification number is switched with that of a junked car, and a clean title is obtained from the DMV. To combat this practice, the 1992 Anti-Car Theft Act authorized the creation of a database, known as the National Motor Vehicle Title Information System, which allows state DMVs to verify a car's title, theft and damage history before issuing a new title. But 15 years later only 30 states belong to the network.
4. "We're just as good at breaking the law as enforcing it..." DMV employees must deal with the public and handle sensitive information, but unsavory characters can slip through anyway. New Jersey, New York,Virginia, and Connecticut have all uncovered DMV scams in the past 10 years, in which employees granted driver's licenses to illegal immigrants for a hefty profit.
5. "...and we all but enable identity theft." Identity theft is the No. 1 crime in the U.S. The simplest form, mostly used by beginners, is to ask the DMV for a duplicate license in someone else's name. Identity thieves simply tell the DMV clerk that they've lost their license or that it was stolen then provide someone else's illegally obtained information. It's a simple con to pull off. As for the victims, there's nothing simple about it -- their credit will be ruined as checks start bouncing and new credit card accounts are opened in their name.
6. "Just because you can't see doesn't mean you can't drive." Everybody thinks they're a good driver, but a 2007 study by market-research firm TNS showed that one in six drivers would fail a state test if they took it today. Indeed, most people get their driver's license in their teens and are never retested. One big problem over time is vision, which tends to degenerate. It's projected that by the year 2025 drivers over age 65 will make up 25% of the driving population, up from 14% in 2001, according to nonprofit research outfit the RAND Corporation. 24 states still do not require older drivers to renew more often or have their vision tested when renewing.
7. "Your vanity plate says 'MUG ME.'" Personalized license plates might seem like a harmless accessory, but they could make you a more likely target for criminals. Why? "Personalized plates indicate that the person bearing them wants to be noticed," says Phil Messina, a retired NYC police officer. "The downside of doing things that tend to 'get you noticed' is that they can get you noticed by the wrong kind of people." Example; plates indicating the driver is a woman or a senior citizen or both -- as in "Katie's Grandma" -- are especially problematic. Spotting one of these plates in a parking lot, a mugger may hide behind or near the car, waiting for the driver to return.
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