History
In 1901, the California State Legislature authorized California cities and counties to issue licenses for operation of many types of wheeled vehicles within their boundaries, including bicycles and automobiles. From 1905 to 1913, the California Secretary of State was authorized to implement a uniform statewide registration and licensing system for motor vehicles. In 1913, the Department of Engineering (predecessor of Caltrans) became responsible for registrations, and the California State Treasurer became the custodian of vehicle records. Licenses for drivers of motor vehicles became mandatory in California on December 13, 1913.
The first Department of Motor Vehicles was established by the Vehicle Act of 1915, but was reduced to the Division of Motor Vehicles within the Department of Finance in 1921. Under the Vehicle Act of 1923, the Division was authorized to appoint inspectors and traffic officers to enforce the Act; these personnel were later spun off in 1947 into the Department of the California Highway Patrol. In 1929, the Division was transferred to the Department of Public Works (a descendant of the old Department of Engineering and an ancestor of Caltrans) and in 1931 DMV again became a full Department. The DMV began collecting a statewide Vehicle License Fee in 1936, replacing the personal property tax that individual cities and counties previously levied directly on motor vehicles regularly garaged within their borders.
Some DMV locations have been purported to have widely differing pass rates on the driver's license test. According to the Orange County Register, in 2009, the highest pass rate was 75% and the lowest 60%.
Read more about this topic: California Department Of Motor Vehicles
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1874–1945)
“The history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations ... all of which have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)