Does Maryland (population 6.2 million) have a good reason for issuing drivers licenses with ID that are one letter and *twelve* digits, when California (population 39.5 million) finds one letter and seven digits to be quite sufficient?

NJ is worse.

Not only is it more characters (15), it is in fact entirely derivable from your name, DOB, gender, and eye color. Meaning, it's not necessarily unique.

Oh, apparently Maryland numbers are similar (except skip gender and eye color): highprogrammer.com/alan/numb… ... which I can confirm is accurate for my new Maryland DL.

That said, a Maryland DL has *two* other numbers on it -- a 9-digit number next to the photo on the front, and a 10-digit number below (and hopefully matching) the barcode on the back. Maybe one of those is unique?