TEXAS, USA — The video at the top of this article initially aired on Wednesday, Sept. 6.
The Texas Department of Public Safety continues to experience an outage to its driver license system after trying to update it over Labor Day weekend. The issue continues to impact driver license services across the state a week after the updates were first supposed to be installed.
On Friday morning, DPS issued a statement announced that it was cancelling driver license appointments across the sate from 7:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. at all offices across the state, with three exceptions that would maintain regular business hours: the Garland Mega Center, the Fort Worth Mega Center and the Carrollton Mega Center.
In the statement, DPS said affect customers would be notified of appointment cancellations through their preferred stated contact method. The agency's statement confirmed that the cancellations were related to the same upgrades that had hindered their system all week long.
The statement also said no security issues reported at this time.
Affected services include renewing/replacing a driver license or ID card, obtaining a driver record and verifying eligibility. The issued also appear to be impacting online services.
The issue has left a lot of Texas drivers unhappy, especially drivers who made appointments months ago like Larry Hollie.
"Well, I'm nervous now because [my license] expires Friday, and my appointment has been [scheduled] for over a month," said Hollie.
Some of the police departments WFAA reached out to have said that their officers are aware of the situation, and that they will likely be lenient when it comes to issues tickets for licenses that have expired during this outage window.
But frustrations remain just the same.
Abul Hasan visited a DPS location in Plano on Tuesday to renew his license.
"All day long they are having this problem," he said., "[Online also] was a very slow system and giving me an error."
For 16-year-old Christopher Williams, who walked into the DPS office in Grand Prairie on Wednesday ready for his driving test and his very first driver's license, the outage was disappointing in a different way.
"I've been practicing for months, so I spend most of my time out on the road and then in parking lots," said Williams.
Labanya Buligonda visited the Grand Prairie office, too. She knew there had been some issues but never expected them to last this long.
A DPS worker at the Grand Prairie location shared that anyone with a September appointment could visit any of the offices to complete their transactions once the systems are back online.
Texas is second in the U.S. to California for licensed drivers on the road. From September 2021 to August 2022, DPS issued more than 10,000 licenses in Collin County, over 15,000 in Dallas County and over 17,000 in Tarrant County in that 12-month period.
Miguel Vacquez is a 16-year-old who has recently learned to drive.
"My mom, she teaches me, and these past six months, she's been teaching me day and night," Vacquez said.
He was excited to get his license because it would be a huge help to his family, he said. But, for now, new drivers are being turned away, despite long hours behind the wheel with their driving teachers.