Comment by cafard

The Maryland DMV used to be quite efficient. Once, having mislaid my driver's license (at my mother-in-law's, 100 miles away), I drove to the Wheaton DMV, and was out within 20 minutes with a new license.

This was about two years before 9/11, after which a whole lot of rules came down about verifying one's identity, and the DMV then crawled.