Legal Commentary

A Better Approach to Driving While Suspended

By TChris

State legislators, always searching for a new punishment to show how tough they are on crime, find all kinds of reasons to suspend driver's licenses.

The folks I see [in traffic court] are cited because they neglected to pay a ticket, and were suspended. The folks I see are cited because they neglected to show up in court, and were suspended. The reasons for these scofflaws' non-appearance? They have no money. They are unemployed, poor, broke, foreclosed.

In Wisconsin, licenses are suspended for underage drinking. Legislators are quite certain that college kids won't drink until they turn 21 if they fear the loss of a driver's license for attending a house party. And that works ... not at all. Unfortunately, a policy's failure rarely motivates a legislature to rethink the policy. [more ...]

Suspensions put people in a tough spot. If you can't drive to work and don't have good public transportation, or if your job requires you to drive, you may lose your employment. You may not be able to take your child to child care. Or (as many choose to do) you can drive illegally and risk another ticket, another set of fines, another suspension.

It is bad policy to suspend driver's licenses for conduct that doesn't involve driving. A suspension might coerce the occasional scofflaw into ponying up the money for unpaid tickets, but it doesn't bestow upon indigent people the sudden ability to pay fines and (sometimes exorbitant) court costs. It doesn't teach a lesson as might taking away a toy. We want people to drive legally. We don't want to confront them with a choice between driving illegally and losing their jobs. That isn't a reasonable way to punish acts that are unrelated to the driving privilege or to coerce payment of court obligations.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on July 10, 2008 (boomark / email).