How Do We Keep Habitual Traffic Offenders Out Of Cars And Off The Road?
Impound Vehicles Of Habitual Traffic Offenders
This morning my blog focused on the problem of people without or with suspended or revoked drivers licenses. The problem is serious and measures need to be taken to curb this activity and reduce highway deaths, injuries and property damage. Once again I found some interesting answers in the Automobile Club of America Foundation study titled “Unlicensed To Kill”. The title of this report comes from “Unlicensed to Kill,” a small article that appeared in the June 13, 1994 issue of Time Magazine.
The report is based on research conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) under the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) a nationwide census providing NHTSA, Congress and the American public yearly data regarding fatal injuries suffered in motor vehicle traffic crashes.
How Do We keep These Drivers From Continuing this Behavior?
Presently the punishments for any one of these enumerated actions (e.g., driving while intoxicated, reckless driving, driving without a license, or driving on a suspended or revoked license) go from monetary fines to periods of incarceration. Add to that counseling, remedial education, training programs and community service and license sanctions. The goal here is to save lives and the findings of the AAA report seems to point to the fact that they can indeed be an effective tool in reducing traffic violations, fatalities and injuries, but the same literature also acknowledges that drivers with suspended and revoked licenses often drive in spite of their suspensions and revocations.
Given that 30 to 70 percent of those drivers whose licenses have been suspended or revoked may continue to drive and given that many of these drivers become involved in serious injury and fatal crashes, more stringent measures to curtail the risks posed by these drivers seem warranted.
Many believe that modifying unlawful driver behavior might not be an effective way to deal with this issue and think that engineering around this problem” is the best approach, and that the answer may be best found in vehicle sanctions or modifications that physically impede unlawful driving through vehicle impoundment, electronic drivers licenses, or alcohol ignition interlocks.
Perhaps the most dramatic, but definitely low tech, vehicle sanction imposed on a driver is impoundment. This simple, low-technology strategy renders the vehicle unavailable to the driver for a prescribed period of time. At the end of the impoundment period, the owner was obliged to pay the costs associated with impoundment to reclaim his or her vehicle. The potential benefits of a vehicle impoundment law are basically two: (1) for a period of 30 days, impounded vehicles are unavailable to be driven by those without licenses or with suspended or revoked licenses, and (2) the inconvenience and cost associated with vehicle impoundment might have some residual deterrent effect that would curtail future illegal driving beyond the 30-day period that the vehicle was impounded. Overall, those drivers whose vehicles were impounded were significantly less likely to be subsequently convicted of driving without a license and driving with a suspended or revoked license; and yet they continued to be involved in crashes. In an up-coming blog I’ll address several other more high tech methods of achieving the goal of keeping these people off of the streets.
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