I beg to differ, but I thought the point of this thread was whether or not you would drive with an unlicensed driver. Unless you believe that your answer to that question depends on exactly why they became unlicensed, and whether you had all relevant facts about this. Maybe, “Sure, I’d drive with an unlicensed driver, but only if I knew exactly why they had lost their license and why they never got it reinstated. And definitely not if they lied about how they lost their license.”
You are trying to “add up” a whole bunch of basic information that is IMO irrelevant to the question I asked.
Well, it does depend. I would generally avoid getting into a car with someone who lost their license over bureaucratic bullshit, but I would refuse to get into a car with someone who lost their license over a DUI or the like.
If what they are telling me doesn’t add up, then I would tend to assume it’s the latter.
Objectively, that is not true. Do some searches on unlicensed drivers and accidents. One report said that 20% of fatalities involved unlicensed drivers. To be fair, that same article also said that such drivers tended to be young males, driving at odd hours, which doesn’t apply to the OP’s friend. I might be leery of riding with a 17 year old at 2 AM even if I knew he had a license!
All that said: Let’s say the friend causes an accident, with you or your wife in the car. Even licensed drivers screw up from time to time. It comes out that not only is the friend unlicensed, but you as passenger KNEW this. Could you be charged as an accessory?
I don’t know about criminally, but I’ll bet any victims of that accident are going to do their best to sue you. And IANAL, but I’d think they’d have a decent case.
And/or lucky. Even a reasonably careful driver can get caught one way or another.
The last times I got pulled over were for equipment issues. Our older car’s headlights tend to burn out at random after a year or two, one had burned out, and we had not yet fixed it. The other time, the light that illuminates the license plate had burned out, unbeknownst to us. Since I’m not usually standing behind my car when I’m driving it, I would never had noticed that.
Both times I had to show license etc. The first time, I had to go to court to show it had been fixed, then the ticket was dismissed. The second time, I just got a warning.
Had I been unlicensed, I think my evenings would have gone very differently.
Arguably, the friend may well be a VERY good driver - she knows she’s driving at risk, and really, REALLY does not want to give the cops any reason to pull her over, so she’s driving extra carefully.
I would also not ride with the person. I’d drive us both, or drive separately.
My car insurance generally follows my car, not me. If the unlicensed driver gets in an accident, I’d be more limited in how to pay any medical bills I had, plus lost wages, etc.* The same would be true for people injured in an accident caused by the unlicensed driver. And yes, they could be physically, not just financially, at more risk. An ER has to treat people who need immediate treatment for serious conditions. But, once a person is stable, the hospital does not have to treat anyone who can’t pay. There are lots of debilitating injuries that you would need non-ER treatment to resolve.
Also financial ruin can definitely have physical effects.
Also, just a tangent, but my car insurance specifically covers a new car I purchase for a short time to give me a chance to transfer the insurance.
*In my state, no way is the car validly insured. The person insuring it would have had to lie in getting the insurance, which would cause the insurance not to have to pay.
I have not gone back to look which quotes you are thinking of but you most certainly will get suspended for one unpaid ticket. In fact it’s probably the most common reason. You have the opportunity to pay without coming to court. If you don’t pay you get a court date. If you don’t make that court appearance they might give you a second chance and send another subpoena. If you don’t show up for that you will get suspended and probably a warrant. Reason for suspension will be “FTA” for failure to appear. I see it all the time.
An unwarranted ticket might be written. This is the case of an illogical ticket being written. It’s also illogical for someone to be a victim of such a miscarriage of justice and just say “fuck it I’ll never try to get a license again.” I won’t presume to say your friend is a liar. That is one possibility. Or you could be remembering wrong. Or the circumstances could have been explained to you poorly. What is the least likely scenario is that it happened as you initially explained it.
Well, it’s not even illegal to drive around a parked school bus with no lights and no sign. So yeah, I don’t believe this story.
I guess a cranky cop could have given her a ticket anyway, and then she neither contested it nor paid it, and her license was eventually suspended for failure to pay the fine. And she’s been driving for a decade with no license as a result. And presumably no insurance.
No, i wouldn’t ride in a car she’s driving. Why risk it?
If that’s the story, and it was my friend, I’d be on her back to clean up her record and restore her license, though.
The story you are channeling MAKES NO SENSE. Either there is some serious miscommunication going on or your friend is lying or your friend is seriously delusional.
If a friend of mine said they got 90 days in jail for eating a candy bar in a store, I’d be equally skeptical. And the real story turns out to be:
I was caught eating a candy bar without paying for it.
I signed a “trespass” agreement agreeing not to enter the store
I entered the store and got arrested for trespassing
I got 90 days probation
I didn’t show up for my probation meeting
I was fitted with an ankle monitor
I cut it off, and got caught
I got 90 days in jail
So “I got 90 days in jail for eating a candy bar in Walmart”
Which is the kind of thing we all think happened to your friend. Because it is a million times more plausible than what you are reporting.
Their very narrow point is actually true, if I’m understanding correctly. I think they’re saying the mechanical risk of getting into a crash isn’t affected by being unlicensed. It isn’t an impairment like being drunk. In that very narrow sense, there is legitimately no extra risk for being unlicensed.
At the same time, there’s a ton of extra “but if someone crashes into you” risk being assumed if you knowingly ride with an unlicensed driver. (I assume.) But that’s not the same risk as they’re talking about. They mean the risk of actually getting in an accident in the first place. And that risk is not increased by paperwork or lack thereof.
Seems perfectly plausible to me. If she didn’t pay that fine, even if it was a bullshit ticket from a cop that was just hassling her, that’s an automatic suspension, 100%. I don’t know why you think it wouldn’t be, or why you think that somehow doesn’t add up.
Then she’s getting suspended for not paying the fine and not appearing in court. She’s not getting suspended for the original offense. Just like my example. My hypothetical friend did not go to jail for eating a Mars bar in Walmart. They went to jail for all the stupid shit they did after that.
Look at my posting history. I’ve been arrested for “driving a stolen car” because the cop “fat fingered” the VIN. I’ve been cited for waiting too long at a stop sign. I have no doubt that bullshit tickets happen. But unless you’ve pissed off the entire town or county police force and the judges/magistrates as well, you are not getting suspended for a simple minor infraction unless you escalate the shit out of it.
I’m not sure you’re getting the “very narrow” part of this. Only in the sense of a physical impairment like being drunk does the paperwork not matter. So it’s less bad than a DUI, but that’s about the best thing I can say about it.
Being unlicensed is obviously bad and a huge increase in your risk of a bad outcome in the case of an accident, but it has no bearing on the odds of that accident occurring. People aren’t impaired by being unlicensed like they are from being drunk.
But when telling a friend, she might blame the ticket instead of the failure to pay or respond or whatever. Blaming the ticket lets her play the victim, while copping to just blowing it off would paint her as alarmingly irresponsible. Again that seems perfectly plausible to me, spinning the story so that the teller comes off in the best light. That’s human nature.
ETA: Oh yeah, and 100% those bus lights were on and there were kids in it. But other than the OP (because he actually knows her), why would any of us here in the thread care? I don’t understand the point of trying to uncover an inconsistency here.
Four or five years back, I was getting gas in a little mom and mom gas station in the middle of nowhere when I saw a cop pull over a man and woman in a lifted pick up truck. They pulled into the gas station parking lot, the male driver was already bawling his eyes out, and the woman was looking scared.
The man was driving on a suspended license and did not have insurance. He was handcuffed and loaded into the cop car. The cop refused to allow him to give the keys to the woman who was now getting pretty hysterical and had the car towed, then left with the driver. This left the woman stranded in a strange place in the middle of nowhere.
I actually thought the whole thing was pretty entertaining because I was once hit by an uninsured driver and have never forgiven him.
Why are you in jail?
Because I killed someone. No you aren’t, you liar! You are in jail because you got caught and then convicted!
Apologies for not clearly setting forth specifics which I’m not perfectly clear about myself, and which I thought absolutely irrelevant to the question I was asking.
The act of driving without a license (versus completing the onerous paperwork required to get your license back and then driving) poses exactly zero risk to the life and limb of anyone on the road.
There is no magical mechanism that causes a good driver to be a dangerous one when their license is taken away, or that causes a dangerous driver to become a safe one when they fill in the paperwork to get their license back
