Map: American Cities With the Worst DMVs

There’s a well-loved quote from The Simpsons in which Bart’s aunts, Patty and Selma, say of their job at the local DMV, “Some days, we don’t let the line move at all. We call those weekdays.”

When you need to sort out a bit of vehicular paperwork, heading to your local Department of Motor Vehicles really can feel like that: Long, dull lines and even longer wait times conspire to make it one of those places that few Americans want to be—but unfortunately, everyone has to go at some point in their lives. And now, the folks at Sudoku Bliss have crunched the numbers to find out which of America’s DMV locations are the worst (and the best) when it comes to that dreaded long wait in line.

1. The DMVs with the Most Complaints
2. The Cities with the Best (and Worst) DMVs
3. Most Improved DMVs

The DMVs with the Most Complaints

The study’s authors aimed to find out which DMVs had people venting their frustrations the loudest by collating online reviews of three-stars or fewer for 140 DMVs across 30 cities, and scanning the reviews for negative comments and keywords—bad, crowded, delay, inefficient, slow, and wait among them. 

Unfortunately for the locals of Charlotte, North Carolina, they came out on top not only with the worst branch of the DMV in the country (with just over 30 percent of online reviews considered negative), and had two more branches in the national Top 5 (scoring 25.3 percent and 24.6 percent for fourth and fifth place overall).

Branches in Memphis (26.8 percent) and Nashville (26.2 percent) took second and third place, while the remainder of the Top 10 was filled out by two DMV locations in Denver and two in Portland, Oregon, as well as a DMV in Austin.

DMVs in Denver were also ranked in 15th and 17th place, and Charlotte cropped up again in 13th place—giving both cities the unenviable distinction of having no less than four entries in the Top 20 worst DMVs in the country. 

The Cities with the Best (and Worst) DMVs

The study also analyzed which DMVs were sending the most people away happy. Indianapolis came out on top based on the average percentile rank of each city’s stable of DMVs with an average of 89.9. The city had a total of four DMVS in the Top 10, and all seven of its DMVs ranked 32 or higher overall.

Phoenix (85) came in a close second, and similarly had two locations at the very top of the survey. No location ranked outside the Top 40. Seattle, with a score of 76.79, rounded out the top three.

Unfortunately, Charlotte’s poor showing overall gave it a combined score of 8.33 percent, and not one of its DMV locations was ranked in the Top 100. It was followed by Portland (24.18) and Austin (24.71). 

Most Improved DMVs

The study’s authors also looked at which cities had seen the biggest year-on-year improvements in their online reviews between 2023–24.

Oklahoma City took all three places in the Top 3 with negative-to-positive shifts of -81.5 percent, -69.5 percent, and -67.5 percent, respectively, at three of its DMVs. The news was less good for Los Angeles, which saw a whopping 120 percent shift in the opposite direction in the same period.

Nationwide, the study’s authors also noted that DMVs across America are currently averaging just over 3.4 negative reviews per month. That’s slightly above last year’s average of 2.99, but it’s a far cry from 2021, in which an all-time record of 4.39 monthly negative reviews were recorded across the United States. Perhaps the line is beginning to move after all.

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