As you may have noticed, Car Charts is about the usage of cars as much as it is about the manufacture and sale of cars. So here is a usage-based chart, presented as a quiz: what does this simple pie chart depict? Hints: it involves drivers rather than cars, and only drivers licensed in the state of Ohio.
I’ll bet most of you will get this, so here’s the answer: Ohio has a population of some 12 million, of which 8 million hold driver’s licenses. Of that 8 million, about 1 million licenses are suspended at any given time. If you think that cannot be right, see the two reports from which these numbers are derived,1 but don’t read the footnote yet, as we have one more quiz question. What does this next pie chart reveal about those 1 million suspensions?
Sixty percent of current license suspensions are “DRS,” debt-related suspensions. To quote from Road to Nowhere:
Ohio is one of 23 states that suspend driver’s licenses for failure to pay civil or criminal fines or fees. In 2017, more than 3 million total driver’s license suspensions were on Ohio’s books. Of those, more than 2 million (about 60%) were for “offenses unrelated to safe and responsible vehicle operation,” such as failure to pay child support or a court fine. [ We get to 3 million because the average suspended driver has three suspensions at once! ] Ohio’s reality is similar to other states that impose DRS. For example, in “Florida, 72% of all driver’s licenses [sic] suspension notices are issued for nonpayment of fines and fees.”
Long ago and far away I think the story here was that suspensions arose from multiple traffic offenses: the purpose was to induce better driving behavior by charging fines, and if the fines were not paid, a license was suspended. (And at some point along the way we know cities and towns realized that traffic tickets and suspension fees could be good sources of revenue, and so as of now, for example, the average cost of a speeding ticket in the USA is about $150.) But nowadays (in these 23 states at least) jurisdictions have chosen to allow DMVs to become debt-collection agencies.
What are the various debts one can rack up, leading to a suspension? (All the following are from Road to Nowhere.)
There are specifically driving-related items:
“License forfeiture suspensions” occur when a person is charged with certain driving related misdemeanors and either fails to appear in court or fails to pay a court fine.
“Judgment suspensions” occur if a court issues a judgment finding a person responsible for property damage or personal injury caused by use, care, or maintenance of a motor vehicle, and that person fails to pay what is owed.
“Noncompliance suspensions” occur when a driver does not show proof of insurance at a traffic stop or at the time of an accident.
“Random selection noncompliance suspensions” occurred when a vehicle owner did not provide proof of insurance in response to a request from the BMV mailed to randomly selected drivers.
“Security suspensions” occur when an uninsured driver causes an accident that results in more than $400 worth of damage or injury and the other party submits a crash report to the BMV.
But there are suspensions driven by debts incurred outside the realm of driving:
“Warrant blocks” prevent a person from obtaining or renewing a driver’s license or vehicle registration and can be imposed by a court for any person who has an outstanding warrant.
“Child support suspensions” occur when a driver fails to pay child support or fails to appear in response to a subpoena or warrant for child support issues.
What scale of financial burden (or, from a different angle, state revenue level) do these represent? The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland estimates about $1 billion in unpaid DRS are outstanding in Ohio, built up over the years. How might this translate at the individual driver level? Road to Nowhere offers an example of how the fines and fees compound over time, often making it difficult for the suspended driver to escape the “loop:”
You get the idea.
I refuse to get political here, but I will point out two perspectives on all this, from the left and the right sides of the aisle, which oddly enough align. The left side will assert that these DRS costs fall disproportionately on the poor (they are correct), and this is deeply unfair (a matter of opinion) and so should be stopped. The right side will agree that DRS should be trimmed back, because one cannot depend on a workforce a large portion of which at any moment could be pulled off the road (the Census Bureau says some 80% of employed Ohioans drive to work). I’ll let you figure out where you stand on all this.
Do I have a point to make here, other than to provide you information about automobiles that you may not have known? Yes, and that is a theme I reiterate often: the car is not just a metal box with a motor. The car (I believe especially in America) is woven into the very fabric of our society in immense breadth and depth. (In Ohio it even impinges on how we raise our children, by licenses becoming child support enforcement tools!) As such, our fascination with the latest models or technologies, while valid, perhaps misses the broader picture of what cars mean to the USA.
Road to Nowhere: Debt-Related Driver’s License Suspensions in Ohio, Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, 2022, and Providing Labor Market Context for Debt-Related Driver’s License Suspensions in Ohio, Fee and Mikelbank, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, 2024.