I saw some snark on mastodon that applies here: I don't need AI to write essays or synthesise art, I need it to stand in line at the DMV for me.
In other countries I know periodic car inspection is like a few hours at most, every couple of years or so (and that only starts after the car is a good few years old already).
In the past decade, I’ve had to visit the DMV office twice for a combined total of about two and a half hours. I’ve also had to get my two cars emissions tested about three times taking about 30 minutes each time. 4 hours of my time over a decade isn’t worth getting worked up about. It’s annoying but so are about 1,000 other things in life.
Still, you generally never visit for vehicle inspections. Third parties take care of that.
You visit the state agency office for licensing issues. Want to drive a vehicle? Want your vehicle to be properly registered in your state? Go to the DMV.
For these essential functions, you should make an appointment. But truthfully, the appointment doesn’t really matter. There are too few offices for the demand, so most space in the agency is dedicated to the waiting room. I’ve waited nearly a day one unlucky time. And there are different functions per line. Your form may need to be processed by multiple functions. So you need to wait in multiple lines. It is a few minutes if no one is there, but hours otherwise.
The only reason why you’re there is because you have a relatively simple thing to accomplish. And you’ll only need to do this a few times while you live in that state, since renewals are usually done via post.
Is it the worst thing we have to do? Nope. But it’s highly disruptive because you don’t know how long it will take, despite being relatively straightforward. It’s an example of poor customer service’s power to shape opinion.
For normal cars here (Italy) inspection is first time after 4 years and then every 2 years.
Once (but frequency of inspections was lower if I recall correctly) you could only have it inspected by the equivalent of the DMV, since several years there are authorized (private) workshop/mechanics that can do it, so the process is much easier/faster than before and you have the possibility to choose among many different places to go and it is usually a matter of a few days at most to get an appointment.
For some kind of papers/authorizations (as an example to add a trailer to your car or if you import a car from another country) you still need to actually go to the government offices, and here - usually - the troubles start, appointments only available after several months, long queues anyway, even minor issues with the documentation resulting in stopping the procedure and needing a new appointment, a nightmare.
Recently a friend bought a new car and needed to have the modifications for his disabilities (made by a specialized, authorized workshop) inspected and approved, it took him (actually to the workshop, that AFAICU has even some advantages in the queuing system) almost four months to get the vehicle inspected and approved.