Californians could choose their preferred driver's license photo under proposed law

If you are, as Carly Simon once sang, so vain, you'll love Josh Newman's big idea.

The Democratic state senator from Fullerton is proposing a bill that would allow drivers to take more than a single photo when applying for a driver's license at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Why? To help fatten the state's coffers, says Newman.

“Recall your last experience going to the DMV,” Newman told Steve Milne with Capital Public Radio. “You finally get to that point in line where they snap your picture and you might or might not be ready for it and they might or might not show it to you before you get it. But you get what you get. So many of us get photos that aren't particularly flattering and you have no choice these days but to show that photo to everybody.”

Here's how it would work: for each new photo you take, you pay an additional fee. The money raised would go into a Driver Education and Training Fund, which the senator says is badly needed since most public schools got rid of their driver's ed classes after the Great Recession. As Newman put it in an interview, “working class families can't afford to send their kids to private driver's ed. Driver's who don't take driver's ed tend to be worse drivers for their first decade of driving.”

Newman told Milne that an applicant would have two choices.

“One is that if you paid extra at the DMV, you could get another picture taken, or subsequent pictures taken, until you got one you that you thought you could live with,” he said. “Or the second path is, as with passport photos, you could go to a photographer, who would be accredited by the DMV, and would use the spec provided and you could get a picture that suited your preference as to how you would be presented.”

Newman's bill does not yet include how much the photos would cost, but that could come once the proposed legislation goes next to a Senate committee for consideration. Newman told Fox 40 News after he submitted the bill last week that he was hopeful it could wind its way through the legislative process and reach the governor's desk later this week.

“By offering people the chance to have a driver's license photo that their spouse or loved ones don't mock, that they're proud to show,” Newman told the station.

If there's one California who would be thrilled by Newman's idea, it's Doug Johnson, a musician/surfer from Ventura known as Doug the Drummer who a few years back hosted a Bad Driver's License contest.

“Why is it that the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) seems to catch everyone in the midst of a bad face day?” says his online pitch. “Doug Johnson decided to do something about it!! Check out Doug's bad face days at the DMV. In between Doug's third and fourth victorious trips to the California DMV he decided to host the world's first International Bad Driver's License Contest. As fairness and equity are of tantamount importance to Doug, he immediately declared himself the Honorary Judge and excluded himself from the competition. ”

Doug even coined a nickname for his idea: the BDL, or “bad driver's license.”

While it's unclear who, if anyone, actually won the contest, contestants were encouraged to email a jpeg file showing a good photo along with a bad DMV photo. And what would the winner receive?

“Most prizes are experiential in nature,” said the website, “such as but not limited to: a heightened sense of confidence, invincibility and accomplishment; a newer, deeper, more forgiving, more sympathetic and more united relationship with your own dark side.”