Driver's License Suspensions Research Articles

A Consideration of Racism in Pediatric Epidemiologic Studies

A Consideration of Racism in Pediatric Epidemiologic Studies

Driver's License Suspension for Unpaid Fines and Fees: The Movement for Reform

Nearly eleven million people in the United States have a suspended driver’s license for unpaid fines and fees. Laws that suspend, revoke, or prevent renewal of driver’s licenses and/or restrict driving privileges (i.e., registration holds and non-renewals) for nonpayment of traffic- and court-related debt criminalize poverty and disproportionately impact those with a lower economic status. These unproductive and harmful debt-based restrictions not only fail to increase collections of fines and fees, but also divert important public resources for law enforcement and courts away from public safety. The primary way in which these restrictions manifest themselves is through driver’s license suspensions, which are the focus of this article. However, several states also hold or suspend registrations or other required compliance documents, creating the same types of complications that result from a suspended license. The racial disparities of debt-based driver’s license suspensions are even more troubling, as individuals of color are more likely to experience poverty and to be stopped by law enforcement, as well as ticketed, arrested, charged, and convicted for traffic violations. To date, twenty-two states and Washington, D.C. have passed reforms that curb or eliminate the use of driver’s license suspensions and driving privilege restrictions for unpaid fines and fees. While most states continue to suspend, revoke, or prohibit license and/or vehicle compliance renewals for those with unpaid court debt, a growing movement for reform has taken hold. This Article will discuss the imperative for stopping debt-based restrictions and examine the rationales and impacts of two pathways to reform: litigation and legislation. This Article will lay out specific factors that jurisdictions should consider in their reform approach. Careful evaluation of these factors will ensure the greatest benefit while posing the least harm to those most impacted by these policies.

Individual and geographic variation in Driver's license suspensions: Evidence of disparities by race, ethnicity and income

IntroductionAlthough access to a motor vehicle is essential for pursuing social and economic opportunity and ensuring health and well-being, states have increasingly used driver's license suspensions as a means of compelling compliance with a variety of laws and regulations unrelated to driving, including failure to pay a fine or appear in court. Little known about the population of suspended drivers and what geographic resources may be available to them to help mitigate the impact of a suspension. MethodsUsing data from the New Jersey Safety Health Outcomes (NJ-SHO) data warehouse 2004–2018, we compared characteristics of suspended drivers, their residential census tract, as well as access to public transportation and jobs, by reason for the suspension (driving or non-driving related). In addition, we examined trends in the incidence and prevalence of driving- and non-driving-related suspensions by sub-type over time. ResultsWe found that the vast majority (91%) of license suspensions were for non-driving-related events, with the most common reason for a suspension being failure to pay a fine. Compared to drivers with a driving-related suspension or no suspension, non-driving-related suspended drivers lived in census tracts with a lower household median income, higher proportion of black and Hispanic residents and higher unemployment rates, but also better walkability scores and better access to public transportation and jobs. ConclusionsOur study contributes to a growing literature that shows, despite public perception that they are meant to address traffic safety, the majority of suspensions are for non-driving-related events. Further, these non-driving-related suspensions are most common in low-income communities and communities with a high-proportion of black and Hispanic residents. Although non-driving-related suspensions are also concentrated in communities with better access to public transportation and nearby jobs, additional work is needed to determine what effect this has for the social and economic well-being of suspended drivers.

Does Punishment Compel Payment? Driver’s License Suspensions and Fine Delinquency

Many state and local governments use the threat of driver's license suspension (DLS) to compel the payment of fines and fees. In this paper, I provide the first quasi-experimental evidence on the efficacy of such threats. Using administrative records from the City of Chicago, I estimate the effect of receiving a threat of DLS on the payment of traffic fines. To isolate the causal effect of receiving a threat, I exploit cross-sectional variation in exposure to a change in the enforcement of DLS policy in a fuzzy difference-in-differences research design. Receiving a threat of DLS increases traffic fine payment by $658 on average over the four years following receipt, representing 40 percent of the average traffic fine debt among drivers in my sample. The effect is significantly smaller among drivers with vehicles registered in higher-poverty ZIP Codes. My estimates suggest that eliminating DLS for the non-payment of traffic fines would reduce annual traffic fine revenue in the city by 4.5 percent.

Enforcing Compliance: The Case of Automatic License Suspensions

Non-incarcerative punishments such as fines are widely used, but the deterrence and distributional effects of this class of punishments depend crucially on the consequences for punishment noncompliance. I provide new evidence on the importance of these noncompliance costs using a unique natural experiment in Washington that first eliminated and then reinstated automatic driver's license suspensions as a penalty for noncompliance with traffic offenses. The shift in noncompliance costs created by automatic license suspensions lead to large increases in compliance, fine-repayment and total punishment with a stronger effect in low-income zip-codes, but also suggestive declines in traffic accidents among low-income drivers.

Driver's License Suspension in North Carolina

In this Article, we analyze data concerning driver's license suspension for traffic offenses. The interest of a person in a driver’s license is “substantial,” and the suspension of a license by the state can result in “inconvenience and economic hardship suffered,” as the U.S. Supreme Court has observed, including because a license may “essential in the pursuit of a livelihood.” However, in this analysis of North Carolina data, we found that there are 1,225,000 active driver’s licenses suspensions in North Carolina for non-driving related reasons, relating to failure to pay traffic fines and court courts, and failure to appear in court for traffic offenses. These suspensions constitute about 15% of all adult drivers in the state. Of those, 827,000 are for failure to appear in court, 263,000 for failure to comply with orders to pay traffic costs, fines, and fees, and 135,000 for both. These suspensions are disproportionately imposed on minority residents. Of those with driver’s license suspensions, 33% of those with failure to appear suspensions are black and 24% Latinx, while 35% were white. The demographics for all North Carolina residents who are of driving age include: 65% white, 21% black, and 8% Latinx. Still more severe consequences, DWLR charges, also disproportionately fall on minority residents. We also conducted a series of mixed-model linear regressions on North Carolina driver’s license suspensions from 2010-2017, analyzing the effects of race, poverty, population size, traffic court cases and traffic stops on suspensions per county. Overall, population accounts for most of the variation in suspensions: the more people in the county, the more people have suspended licenses. When we control for population, we see little evidence that traffic stops or traffic cases are driving suspensions. We find that the relationship between the number of people in poverty and the number of suspensions in a county is dependent on race. Put another way, increasing a county’s population by one white individual below poverty increases the number of suspensions by a greater amount than increasing the county’s population by one white above poverty. However, increasing the population by one black individual below poverty increases the number of suspensions by less than increasing the county population by one black individual above poverty. This suggests that poverty functions differently for whites than it does for blacks. We conclude by setting out questions for future research, and describing both law and policy responses to driver’s license suspensions in other jurisdictions, including: constitutional challenges, restoration efforts, dismissals of charges, and legislative efforts to restore licenses and end the suspension of driver’s licenses for non-driving related traffic offenses.

Monetary Sanctions: Legal Financial Obligations in US Systems of Justice.

This review assesses the current state of knowledge about monetary sanctions, e.g., fines, fees, surcharges, restitution, and any other financial liability related to contact with systems of justice, which are used more widely than prison, jail, probation, or parole in the United States. The review describes the most important consequences of the punishment of monetary sanctions in the United States, which include a significant capacity for exacerbating economic inequality by race, prolonged contact and involvement with the criminal justice system, driver's license suspension, voting restrictions, damaged credit, and incarceration. Given the lack of consistent laws and policies that govern monetary sanctions, jurisdictions vary greatly in their imposition, enforcement, and collection practices of fines, fees, court costs, and restitution. A review of federally collected data on monetary sanctions reveals that a lack of consistent and exhaustive measures of monetary sanctions presents a unique problem for tracking both the prevalence and amount of legal financial obligations (LFOs) over time. We conclude with promising directions for future research and policy on monetary sanctions.

Speeding, Punishment, and Recidivism: Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design

This paper estimates the effects of temporary driver's license suspensions on driving behavior. A little known rule in the German traffic penalty catalogue maintains that drivers who commit a series of speeding transgressions within 365 days should have their license suspended for one month. My regression discontinuity design exploits the quasi-random assignment of license suspensions caused by the 365-days cut-off and shows that 1-month license suspensions lower the probability of recidivating within a year by 20 percent. This is largely a specific deterrence effect driven by the punishment itself and not by incapacitation, information asymmetries, or the threat of stiffer future penalties.

The Problem of Suspended and Revoked Drivers Who Avoid Detection at Checkpoints

Objective: Although driver license suspension and revocation have been shown to improve traffic safety, suspended or revoked (SR) drivers who continue to drive—which appears to be the majority—are about 3 times more likely to be involved in crashes and to cause a fatal crash. In California and many other U.S. states, drivers are typically mailed notices requesting that they surrender their licenses when they are SR for reasons other than driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs (DUI), yet they frequently do not comply. Typical procedures at DUI checkpoints in California and other U.S. states include inspecting driver licenses and checking for signs of intoxication during brief contacts with law enforcement officers. Hence, these checkpoints are in fact DUI/license checkpoints in California and many other states. The purpose of this study was to estimate the extent to which SR drivers avoid being detected at DUI/license checkpoints for SR driving, because they illegally retained possession of their license cards.Method: Law enforcement officers used electronic license card readers at DUI/license checkpoints in Sacramento, California, to record data for 13,705 drivers. The SR status of all contacted drivers was determined after the checkpoints and compared to law enforcement citation records from the checkpoints.Results: Although only 3% of the drivers contacted at the checkpoints were SR, about 41% of SR drivers were able to pass through undetected because they presented license cards that they illegally retained. Drivers SR for DUI-related reasons were more likely to be detected, whereas those SR for failure to provide proof of financial responsibility (insurance) were less likely to be detected.Conclusion: The fact that many SR drivers are able to pass through DUI/license checkpoints undetected weakens both the specific and general impacts of checkpoints for deterring SR driving and may diminish the effectiveness of suspension and revocation actions for reducing the crash risk posed by problem drivers. Using license card readers that can quickly identify SR drivers in real time during routine traffic stops and at DUI/license checkpoints warrants further consideration.

Driver's License Suspensions: A Dilution Effect?

Societal animosity toward suspended drivers occurs relatively infrequently unless a life changing event, such as a fatal crash, occurs. The general public vacillation between revulsion, impatience, cynicism, and apathy may be due to the perceived diluting of driver license suspensions. Dilution occurs when legislators suspend a driver’s license for violating non-highway safety laws. With this dilution of drivers’ license suspensions, indifference sets in and the importance of driver’s license suspension wanes in the public sphere. The objective for this study is to explore the dilution effect of driver suspension policies. Results indicate that as a group, non-highway safety suspended drivers differ from licensed drivers when either citations or crashes are considered. Further analysis indicates that a specific sub-group of non-highway suspended drivers, suspended due to failure to maintain liability insurance, may underpin the overall results for the difference between non-highway safety suspended drivers and the average licensed driver. Exclusion of driver’s suspended for failure to maintain liability insurance appears to change the results, indicating that non-highway safety suspended drivers are similar to licensed drivers in citations and crashes. When excluding those suspended for failure to maintain liability insurance, the dilution effect appears to be supported given the remaining non-highway safety drivers appear to be similar to average licensed drivers when considering citations and crashes. This outcome suggests two results. The first is that those suspended for not maintaining liability insurance may be misclassified under non-highway safety suspended drivers as indicated by their crash and violation occurrences relative to other non-highway safety suspended drivers. Second, the results may indicate potential policy interventions to address the role of liability insurance, such as graduated licensing after suspension for those suspended due to lack of liability insurance. These potential policy options are explored in-depth using the literature focused on ability to pay as a remedy to suspension, thereby reassessing the purchase of insurance as a non-highway safety suspension offense.

Crash involvement of drivers with multiple crashes

A goal for any licensing agency is the ability to identify high-risk drivers. Kentucky data show that a significant number of drivers are repeatedly involved in crashes. The objective of this study is the development of a crash prediction model that can be used to estimate the likelihood of a driver being at fault for a near future crash occurrence. Multiple logistic regression techniques were employed using the available data for the Kentucky licensed drivers. This study considers as crash predictors the driver's total number of previous crashes, citations accumulated, the time gap between the latest two crashes, crash type, and demographic factors. The driver's total number of previous crashes was further disaggregated into the drivers’ total number of previous at-fault and not-at-fault crashes. The model can be used to correctly classify at-fault drivers up to 74.56% with an overall efficiency of 63.34%. The total number of previous at-fault crash involvements, and having previous driver license suspensions and traffic school referrals are strongly associated with a driver being responsible for a subsequent crash. In addition, a driver's likelihood to be at fault in a crash is higher for very young or very old, males, drivers with both speeding and non-speeding citations, and drivers that had a recent crash involvement. Thus, the model presented here enables agencies to more actively monitor the likelihood of a driver to be at fault in a crash.

Fatal red light crashes: the role of race and ethnicity

There is an increasing number of motor vehicle crashes (MVCs) in the U.S. that occur at intersections. Noncompliance with traffic signals is one of the causes for such increase. In this study, we focused on Hispanic drivers. It has been shown that failing to follow traffic laws and regulations is a major cause of MVCs in Latin America. Does this driving behavior in Latin America correspond to the Hispanic community in the U.S.? Are U.S. Hispanics more likely to die in a red light incident? Are Hispanics more likely to be red light runners than other racial/ethnic groups in the U.S.? We answered these questions by taking advantage of a 1990–1996 Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) file with additional racial/ethnic information. Overall, we found no differences between African–American, White, and Hispanic drivers regarding red light running. We found that drinking and driving was the most important factor for red light running. However, we found evidence that some Hispanic subgroups may be more vulnerable to red light running. One such subgroup is formed by Hispanics who have no valid driver license and no record of previous driver license suspension. This study is the first to apply national, archival data to document the relevance of race/ethnicity to the red light running problem, and we hope that it might serve as an incentive for more research on this area.

The effects of drinking-driving laws: a test of the differential deterrence hypothesis.

Ontario introduced an Administrative Driver's Licence Suspension (ADLS) law in 1996, whereby a person with a blood alcohol level over the legal limit of 80 mg%, or who refused to provide a breath sample, would have his or her driver's licence suspended immediately for a period of 90 days. We test the differential deterrence hypothesis which would predict that social or lighter drinkers would be more affected by the Administrative Driver's License Suspension law than heavier drinkers. Data from the 1996 and 1997 cycles of the Ontario Drug Monitor, a general population survey of Ontario adults (monthly cross-sectional surveys), were employed (response rate 64-67%). Analyses were restricted to drivers who reported at least some drinking during the last year (n = 3827). The total number of drinks consumed during the past 12 months was analysed with analysis of variance. We found that the mean alcohol consumption of those who reported drinking-driving increased significantly after the ADLS was introduced, whereas the alcohol consumption of those who did not drive after drinking remained the same. The limits of this study include a lack of comparison data from regions without ADLS, a reliance on self-report measures, possible age restrictions of the findings and the fact that only an inferential test of the differential deterrence hypothesis is permitted by the data. Despite these limitations, these findings are consistent with the prediction that lighter or more moderate drinkers will tend to stop driving after drinking completely, and thus drop out of the drinking-driving population when the ADLS law was introduced, leaving heavier drinkers in this population. It will be important to continue to examine the dynamics of differential deterrence over a longer interval.

Co-occurrence of conduct problems and depressive symptoms in early adolescent boys: III. Prediction to young-adult adjustment.

The prediction of young-adult adjustment from early adolescent conduct problems and depressive symptoms was examined for an at-risk sample of approximately 200 males. Conduct problems and depressive symptoms were expected to show stability to young adulthood. It was predicted that early adolescent conduct problems would be associated with a broad range of adjustment problems in young adulthood due to cumulative adjustment failures. Early adolescent depressive symptoms were expected particularly to predict poor relationships with parents and peers. Additive and interactive effects of the two predictors were examined. Conduct problems and depressive symptoms showed significant stability to young adulthood. Conduct problems were associated with a broad range of adjustment problems including continuing problems in peer associations, substance use, self-esteem, relationships with parents, and new problems in noncompletion of education, unemployment, driver's license suspensions, and causing pregnancies. Depressive symptoms predicted particularly to problems in social relationships. Higher levels of both conduct problems and depressive symptoms in early adolescence did not predict to increased difficulties for any one outcome over either problem alone, either due to main or interaction effects. Such co-occurrence, however, did result in problem outcomes in multiple areas, thus, the poorest adjustment overall.

Behavioral and employment consequences of driver's license suspension for drinking driving offenders

A telephone survey of 416 drinking driving offenders was conducted to determine whether or not license suspension was associated with unemployment or job instability. Half of the subjects were convicted offenders who had undergone suspension, and half were offenders who were recently arrested and had not undergone suspension. These two groups were compared regarding incidence and length of unemployment during the prior year. Groups did not differ significantly on incidence or length of unemployment. Frequency of driving was compared between the two groups. Although 69% of suspended offenders admitted driving under suspension, reported frequency of driving was less for suspended than nonsuspended offenders. Costs and perceived social and economic consequences of conviction and suspension were examined. Additionally, disposition of the DUI charges was determined for the recently arrested group, and associations between socioeconomic variables and disposition were determined.

The Law and Criminology of Drunk Driving

Reliable information on patterns and frequency of drunk driving is difficult to obtain. The evidence suggests that driving under the influence is widespread-particularly among males. Today, a set of interrelated criminal laws, procedures, and administrative laws makes it easier to arrest, convict, and punish drunk drivers. Criminal investigation and law enforcement in drunk-driving cases have become simpler as impediments to apprehension, investigation, arrest, and conviction have been systematically removed. The effectiveness of the campaign against drunk driving has been difficult to assess because of the poor quality of data, the lack of carefully planned evaluations, and the difficulty in disentangling the effects of simultaneous intervention programs. Some drunk-driving campaigns seem to have short-term deterrent effects. Driver's license suspensions and revocations may play an incapacitative role. Alcohol treatment programs, however, do not appear to reduce recidivism among drunk drivers. Public education must be directed toward changing popular attitudes and behaviors associated with alcohol consumption.

Summary Driver's License Suspensions

Summary Driver's License Suspensions

Corroboration of drug abusers' self-reports through the use of multiple data sources.

Multiple data sources were used to evaluate the validity of 31 drug abusers' self-reports of recent drug use as well as related behaviors occurring 1 year before and 1 year immediately after admission to a drug-free therapeutic community. Interviews were conducted by individuals not associated with the program. At the initial interview subjects provided a breath test for alcohol and a urine sample to test for other recent drug use. Subjects also signed releases of information so that official records could be checked both before and after admission to treatment to document any hospitalizations, arrests, drug treatment facility stays, and driver's license suspensions or revocations. These multiple data checks showed that drug abusers' self-reports of recent alcohol and drug use and of arrests and hospitalizations over a 2-year period are sufficiently valid for use in treatment outcome research. When differences occurred, it was usually due to subjects reporting more events than appeared on the records.