North Carolina has started issuing vertical driver’s licenses for people under 21, hoping to curb under-age purchase of alcohol and tobacco.
The new licenses make it easy for merchants to spot drivers under 21 — they are printed vertically, rather than horizontally.
The graduated driver’s licenses — and identification cards for non-drivers under 21 — will feature color bars identifying people below legal age, said Marge Howell, spokeswoman for the state Division of Motor Vehicles in Raleigh.
“It’s mainly to help retail clerks and those in the business of selling alcohol and tobacco to make it easier for them to identify those under purchasing age,” Howell said.
Brittany McGee, an 18-year-old Reidsville resident, said she didn’t much care what direction her license was printed in as long as she could drive.
“As long as they put the little heart on there, I’ll be fine,” she said, referring to the organ-donor symbol.
Gail Smith, a senior examiner at the Rockingham County DMV, said Thursday that changes in how licenses look generally bring a flood of calls as soon as the news hits the media.
“We haven’t had anyone question us on them,” Smith said of the simple, but clever, design change.
License and identification holders between 15 and 18 will have two color bars on their cards: A yellow bar with their 18th birthday and a red one with the holder’s 21st birth date, Howell said.
Those between 18 and 21 will just have the red bar. Under-age cardholders do not need to get their vertical cards now; they can wait until time to renew their licenses, Howell said.
The graduated licenses are the culmination of a two-year study by the N.C. Child Fatality Task Force. They examined other states that use the vertical-license format and took the results to the General Assembly, which passed a bill in August to issue them, Howell said.
More than a dozen other states use the format, including Virginia and Indiana, Howell said.
—From staff reports
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