The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) is the state agency responsible for the registration of motor vehicles and boats and the issuance of driver's licenses in the U.S. state of California. It is responsible for regulating new car dealers (through the New Motor Vehicle Board), commercial cargo carriers, private driving schools, and private traffic schools. DMV works with the Superior Courts of California to ensure that convictions are promptly recorded against drivers' licenses and that licenses are subsequently suspended or revoked when too many convictions are accumulated (as measured by a point-based system). DMV also issues identification cards for persons who are ineligible for or do not wish to have a driver's license.
DMV is part of the California Business, Transportation and Housing Agency. It is headquartered in Sacramento and operates local offices in nearly every part of the state. As of December 2007, DMV employed just over 9,000 people, of whom 37% were employed at headquarters and 57% were employed at DMV's 168 field offices; and it was responsible for maintaining records for 28,587,837 people and 33,539,486 vehicles.[1]
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In 1901, California cities and counties were authorized by the California State Legislature to issue licenses governing the operation of many types of wheeled vehicles within their boundaries, including bicycles and automobiles. From 1905 to 1913, the California Secretary of State was authorized to implement a uniform statewide registration and licensing system for motor vehicles. In 1913, the Department of Engineering (predecessor of Caltrans) was given responsibility for handling registrations while the California State Treasurer became the custodian of vehicle records. Licenses for drivers of motor vehicles became mandatory in California on December 13, 1913.
The first Department of Motor Vehicles was established by the Vehicle Act of 1915, but it was reduced to the Division of Motor Vehicles within the Department of Finance in 1921. Under the Vehicle Act of 1923, the Division was authorized to appoint inspectors and traffic officers to enforce the Act; these personnel were later spun off in 1947 into the Department of the California Highway Patrol. In 1929, the Division was transferred to the Department of Public Works (a descendant of the old Department of Engineering and an ancestor of Caltrans) and in 1931 DMV again became a full Department.
DMV began collecting a statewide Vehicle License Fee in 1936, in lieu of the personal property tax which individual cities and counties had formerly levied directly upon motor vehicles regularly garaged within their borders.
Some DMV locations have been purported to have widely differing pass rates for obtaining a driver's license. According to the Orange County Register in 2009, for example, the DMV at Laguna Hills is extremely lenient, while the one at Santa Ana has a pass rate of less than half.[2]