When you get a new driver’s license in North Carolina starting this summer, you may notice that it doesn’t look like your old one or the one your friends and family are carrying.
It won’t feel or sound the same, either.
The Division of Motor Vehicles has hired a new company to make license and ID cards, and with that change comes a new design and material.
The changes also bring about new security features that make the cards more difficult to fake or duplicate, says DMV Commissioner Wayne Goodwin.
“Our new licenses and IDs will be among the most secure identifying documents in the world,” Goodwin said in a statement.
The new cards should start showing up over the next month. License and ID cards already in circulation will remain good until their expiration date. When people renew, whether online or in person, they’ll receive the new design.
The new licenses and IDs will be made of a polycarbonate plastic that is stiffer than the old material and makes a metallic sound when dropped on a hard surface. The card will also include both raised and depressed lettering and patterns, in contrast to the smooth surface of existing ones.
The cardholder’s picture will appear on both sides — in black and white on the front and color on the back. All of the identifying information on the current cards — date of birth, height, gender, eye and hair color — will be there, including the optional race classification.
The card also includes several images that evoke North Carolina: Dogwood flowers, the state flag, a marbled salamander, a lighthouse and mountains on the front, and a Colonial Spanish mustang grazing along a beach on the back.
The design elements are among more than 50 security features that aim to make it easier to detect when a card is a fake, according to the DMV.
Other design elements will remain the same. Cards that meet tougher federal security requirements under the REAL ID Act will still include a star in the upper right-hand corner. Those that don’t meet REAL ID standards will have the phrase “Not for federal purposes.”
Licenses and IDs for people under age 21 will continue to be oriented vertically and include the years in which the cardholder will turn 18 and 21.
The switch to the new company, CBN Secure Technologies Inc., should help reduce the time people wait to receive their licenses in the mail, said DMV spokesman Marty Homan. People have been waiting several weeks longer than normal to get their cards in the mail since a computer glitch in February that allowed people to get a license online when by law they needed to visit a DMV office in person.
The glitch resulted in a backlog for the existing vendor, Homan said, and CBN will be starting from scratch. By mid-summer, customers should receive their licenses and IDs in the mail 10 to 15 days after they visit a DMV office or renew online.
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