North Dakota updates their Drivers License designs

BISMARCK, N.D. (KFYR) – The next time you get your driver’s license from the Department of Transportation, it’ll look a little different.

It’s out with the old and in with the new in Bismarck’s DOT. The new licenses sport more security features, which is good news for most people, but not for others.

“I think the biggest area we see around here is with minors that are getting counterfeit licenses to get into liquor establishments, because we do get reports of that. So that’s probably the biggest concern. So with these new security features, it’s going to make it much more difficult for people to do that,” said Brad Schaffer, the Driver’s License Director at Bismarck’s DOT.

Schaffer says the new licenses will cost the same as the old ones and will have the same real ID standards. The cards have a dynamic look-through element, a ghost image that shows under a black light and feature a new shape: the squircle, which is a circle and a square combined.

Drivers content with their current license can rest easy, though. Their license will still be valid until it expires, as usual. This is good news for North Dakotans who prefer the old design to the new one.

“I think the old one looks better. Yeah. It looks more exciting, I think. Yeah, the colors,” Kristine Campos, a North Dakotan driver, said.

“It looks to me like it could be a lot easier to read when you’re working. I work at a convenience store, so it’d be easier to, I think, do it. I’d have to look at a real one, but I want the old better, I like it,” Dan Brown, another North Dakotan driver, said.

The new cards started rolling out in Bismarck this week. Schaffer says Grand Forks and Devils Lake are next in line to receive the new design, which will be implemented throughout the rest of North Dakota on a rolling basis.

Schaffer says North Dakota is the first state to feature the squircle on a driver’s license.

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