Well, in my case, I am the registered owner of the car, but my wife does most of the driving. So I get the fines for her tickets. As to adminitrative issues, I don’t find it hard to believe that someone might not get the notice of, say, a renewal or a needed inspection.
One’s license can be suspended for any number of things, including a failure to pay child support. A somewhat dated Wired article on why governments like to suspend licenses. I’ll add that I’ve heard of people getting a “written arrest” which is a ticket with a manditory court date attached.
The problem is that people don’t take a license suspension seriously in the first place. They just say “well, I NEED to drive, so I’ll just drive more safely, and won’t get pulled over, and no one will know.”
Of course, in places without mass transit, it’s kind of hard to get around if you don’t drive.
In my experience most (the vast majority) of suspensions are for administrative reasons. Mostly for failure to pay surcharges. Every once and a while I get a suspended driver who lost it for something major like a DWI. I find it very odd that some states arrest for driving while suspended. I just write a ticket and you have to come into court to answer it. For multiple offenders there is mandatory jail time if convicted. We’re not supposed to tow the car either. It is possible to get a motor vehicle warrant but it is a pain in the ass. You have to justify why you think the guy won’t show up in court. It’s easier to just write the ticket and have the judge issue a warrant if he doesn’t show up.
Spouses drive cars too. Sometimes they don’t want to get in trouble for not throwing a quarter in the meter. Yes, I realize how shortsighted he is.
Well, boo hoo. Maybe people should think of what could happen if they break the law BEFORE they break the law, instead of playing the victim AFTER they break the law.
That’s how it works in Canada. Driving while disqualified is a criminal offence: Criminal Code, s. 259(4).
However, sub-section 259(5) then defines “disqualified”:
So, the offence only relates to disqualifications imposed as part of the penalty for conviction of criminal offences relating to use of a motor vehicle, not to administrative issues such as failure to renew a driver’s licence.
in fact, the Supreme Court of Canada has held that the federal Parlianent is constitutionally barred from criminalising driving while suspended for adminstrative reasons under provincial law: Boggs v. The Queen, [1981] 1 S.C.R. 49.
Then again, perhaps the bigger fear is that one such as yourself might mount a vehicle on rails and run it straight into a wall as part of some sort of diabolical experiment.
I’m probably wrong, though.
Hmm, let’s see pay car insurance or buy food? Tough choice there (and one that many people have to make). Also, in many states if you don’t have car insurance, it doesn’t matter if the person who hit you is at five times the legal limit for alcohol, doing lines of coke off Doogie Howser’s ass, talking on the cellphone, and watching the in-car entertainment system, you’re at fault.
Of course, you obey all laws all the time, and never forget to mail out a payment and have never had a screw up of any kind happen with anything, right?
Seriously? I’ve never heard of such a thing. Cite, please? I’m curious.
That’s the law here (at least according to the cops I’ve spoken to). I’ve tried searching the TN government site for the actual laws on the matter, but everything’s in PDF format, and I’m not digging through all the ones that have shown up on searches to see which one contains the actual text of the law to find out if that’s correct or not.
They recently got a lot stricter on these laws around here. Now if you’re caught driving on a suspended license or without insurance, you automatically go downtown and your car is towed. When your area has 50 percent of drivers without insurance, and it’s mandatory, you gotta crack down.
When I was in that situation, I bought food and took the bus.
And if you noticed, I was talking about situations where mass trans was not available.
Around here, at least, any very unhappy looking person on a motor scooter is there because they got their license suspended. You can kinda tell the difference between people choosing to drive a scooter and people who have no choice. Generally it’s the scowl.
So, you are talking about when someone lives in a place that’s say, more than a 2 hour walk from a bus line, they have a supended license and yet still have job, own a car, but cannot afford to pay the insurance, because their budget is rent, heat, food and gasoline. No cigarettes, movies, cable, internet hook-ups or new clothing.
is that about right?
And if it is, and you go ahead and choose to take the risk, then you accept the consequences for your choice and don’t bitch about it, I guess.
FWIW, driving on a suspended license in Florida is only a criminal offense if the person knows or should have known the license is suspended.
Sometimes people have their license suspended because of insurance screw ups or even for unpaid tickets–which they didn’t necessarily know about (traffic cams, etc). In those cases, it is not a criminal offense, just an additional traffic infraction.
However, driving on a license that you know is suspended is criminal.
More or less. For example, where I live it’d probably take me about 4 hours to get to a bus line, and many places I’ve worked, the bus line doesn’t run. Of course, you can spin it however you want, but for a good portion of Americans mass transit isn’t possible. This doesn’t mean that they should get a pass when they’re busted for driving with a suspended license, but it does mean that one shouldn’t automaticaly assume that a person who’s driving on a suspended license is doing it because they think they’re “above the law.”
I think we can all agree that this country would be better off with more mass transit.