DMV Takes a Bad Detour : After fatal accident, program that exempted ticketed drivers will be ended

For 20 years, the California Department of Motor Vehicles operated a little-known program in which some errant drivers who racked up three violations within a year were not warned their licenses would be suspended if they acquired a fourth. The intent was to compare their driving behavior with that of drivers who did receive warnings.

On Friday the department announced it will end the program in December, prodded by two state legislators, Sen. Quentin L. Kopp (I-San Francisco) and Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Panorama City). Unfortunately, it required a tragedy to prompt the announcement.

Last Sunday a pickup truck in the rural Orange County community of Silverado Canyon struck three people, killing one and injuring the other two. Police said the truck’s driver and the driver of an automobile might have been racing. Both were arrested on suspicion of manslaughter and felony driving under the influence.

The license of the truck’s operator would have been suspended had he not been randomly selected to be part of the Negligent Operator Treatment Evaluation System (NOTES). When a computer registered his second speeding conviction within a year it assigned him to the control group. Two other speeding tickets subsequently logged into DMV records were excluded from the NOTES files because of the way the computer was programmed, DMV officials said.

For years the DMV has said that its warnings of imminent license suspensions surely prevent accidents. In this case, the driver’s suspension probably would have been up by the time the accident occurred, but it is fair to presume that some of the drivers in the NOTES study would have lightened up on the accelerator after receiving a warning and some who had accidents might have lost their driving privileges before those accidents occurred.

Those who did not receive warnings might have believed they beat the system. Certainly 20 years was much too long for this program to last, and it is not clear what if anything was learned from it, other than that it was a bad idea.