Set in response to coronavirus, DMV deadline extensions are scheduled to end Friday
If your North Carolina driver’s license or vehicle registration expires after Friday, you won’t be able to put off renewing it because of coronavirus — unless the state changes the deadlines again.
The policy that gives people more time to renew their license or registration because of the COVID-19 pandemic is set to end Friday. The Division of Motor Vehicles is discussing the policy this week, but it’s not clear if the DMV can extend the deadlines on its own.
The deadlines for renewing licenses and registrations and getting safety and emissions inspections are set by law. This spring, the General Assembly added five months to the expiration date of any license, permit, registration or other credential issued by the DMV and waived all fees, fines or penalties for not complying with the old date. Motor vehicle tax payments and inspection deadlines were also delayed to match the new expiration dates.
The extension applied to any DMV credential that expired on or after March 1 and before Aug. 1. Lawmakers left town in late June without extending the policy.
“Our office is not aware of the administration requesting an additional extension from lawmakers,” House Speaker Tim Moore’s spokesman Joseph Kyzer wrote in an email.
The change addressed a problem that arose in March, as state and local officials ordered people to stay home to curb the spread of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Despite those orders, the DMV kept sending out renewal notices for driver’s licenses, registrations and other credentials.
Many people can renew their licenses and registrations online, at www.ncdot.gov/dmv/offices-services/. But some renewals must be done in person, such as when a driver is changing an address or has a restriction other than “corrective lenses.” Some people also worried about going out to get their cars and trucks inspected to renew their registration.
Leslie Solomon is still worried. Solomon, a retired registered nurse who lives near Boone, needs to get her car inspected but is disabled by an autoimmune disease that she says makes her especially vulnerable to coronavirus.
“It’s literally life threatening,” said Solomon, who noted that the coronavirus outbreak is worse now than when the General Assembly put the extensions in place.
One option, said DMV spokesman Steve Abbott, is to have someone else take the car or truck in for an inspection instead. Anyone can bring a vehicle to an inspection site as long as they have the current registration card.
“We agree we don’t want vehicle owners who are at high-risk and whose registration expires to feel pressured to have to go out and get an inspection handled,” Abbott wrote in an email. “So in cases where an owner is uncomfortable to go out, and perhaps already has someone else doing their shopping or errands for them, this would be the same thing.”
Solomon said she’s new to the area and doesn’t have someone to take her car in for her. She’s decided not to get an inspection, which will prevent her from registering her car on time.
“Car registration doesn’t warrant my taking this kind of extreme risk,” she said. “My safety is more important than my car’s.”
The end of the deadline extension policy will add to the number of people seeking to do business with the DMV. The agency’s driver’s license offices are seeing people by appointment only, and those appointments can already be hard to come by.
People who put off visiting an office under the coronavirus policy are beginning to seek out appointments. Meanwhile, the DMV is working through a backlog of customers who need road tests; the agency stopped offering the tests in March, but recent waivers mean drivers can receive provisional licenses or their first North Carolina license without one.
On top of that, there are fewer DMV offices to handle the demand. In March, the agency closed more than half of its driver’s license offices statewide to try to minimize spread of the coronavirus. Some have reopened, but 38 of the 113 offices remain closed.
For more information, go to www.ncdot.gov/dmv/.
This story was originally published July 27, 2020 at 12:31 PM.
