DMV Experiences Licensing Outage

The computers that control driver’s license transactions in Virginia went down this morning, causing a backlog that may affect DMV locations this afternoon.

The statewide licensing outage lasted “a couple of hours” and was resolved by noon, according to Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles spokeswoman Melanie Stokes.

The problem was caused by a faulty server, Stokes said. Licensing systems at some DMV offices may still be experiencing latency issues as a result.

“We’re still having some locations that are experiencing slow transaction times, but that should be worked out fairly quickly,” she said.

This morning’s outage may increase DMV wait times this afternoon, depending on how many of the customers who were turned away this morning decide to return later today. Stokes said that some customers may have been given “return letters” that will allow them to skip the line when they return.

A similar outage occurred on Wednesday, March 9, but only lasted 20 minutes, Stokes said. Both outages were isolated to DMV licensing computers and did not affect other DMV transactions. Stokes said the outages were not related to the extended Virginia DMV outage last summer, which was caused by statewide computer problems.

This is at least the third time in a month that the Four Mile Run DMV office has had to turn away customers. On Feb. 25, a wind storm damaged a large section of the building’s metal roof, forcing it to close for the day.