That used to be true for MN as well, but in the time that I moved from MN to IL back to MN (about 13 years), MN dropped that.

The first four characters of my FL driver's license are a soundex code of my last name. So, this appears to be a common practice.

I always thought that part looked suspicious. Thanks for the tip.

Do you have a source for this? I think it's pretty cool and I'm wondering if there's a reasonably centralized place for other states' formats as well.

It's even worse than just a Soundex of your last name, the entire number is derived off your name and DOB.

http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/numbers/dl_us_shared.html

What's the harm of just a soundex? If you name is on the card anyways, it's not that secretive.

If I know your name, this makes it much more easy to deduce your drivers license number.