A Driving Dilemma: Examining the Community Impacts of Failure to Pay Driver's License Suspensions

Driver’s licenses are central to many people's livelihoods, allowing us the ability to travel for work, education, healthcare, and all other essentials of life. Often, however, driver’s licenses are suspended as a means of enforcing traffic violations. About two years ago, Arizona significantly changed the civil traffic enforcement landscape in the state as it passed a law—S.B. 1551—that, in part, made it so individuals could no longer receive driver’s license suspensions for failing to pay a civil traffic fine. This study aimed to examine how this legal change has impacted civil traffic enforcement in Tempe, Arizona. As part of this work, I helped my thesis supervisor with overseeing student groups in one of his online courses in a research project that centered around studying the community impacts of driver’s licenses suspensions. I met with my thesis supervisor to coordinate how the project would be implemented, assisted students with learning how to use data analysis and visualization tools, and edited the paper of the student group selected as the top team so that they could share their findings with members of the Tempe Municipal Court. Coinciding with the research done by these student groups, I also conducted my own analysis, using traffic data provided by the Tempe Municipal Court to be able to determine how the passage of S.B. 1551 was affecting civil traffic trends related to failure to pay dispositions, if at all. Overall, I found that S.B. 1551 presented implications for both accountability and equality related to civil traffic enforcement. To the enforcement concerns, the number of failure to pay dispositions rose after the passage of SB 1551. With traffic fines being a central means for punishing and deterring traffic violations, people no longer being compelled to pay them may present issues for regulating traffic safety. However, this study also demonstrated that, had S.B. 1551 not been implemented, driver’s license suspensions for failure to pay dispositions may have disproportionately and adversely impacted communities in Tempe by socioeconomic status and race. Hopefully, this project can guide policymakers in setting civil traffic enforcement policy, taking into account both the enforcement and equitability implications, as well as to serve as a starting point for future research on the topic.