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In a car centric country like the United States. Having a suspended license because of debt is just wrong. It has wide implications against the poor. Poorer pe

by xyst 3y ago

In a car centric country like the United States. Having a suspended license because of debt is just wrong. It has wide implications against the poor. Poorer people will probably ignore it. Won’t pay it. Drive with suspended license. Have to pay higher premiums or just dropped completely from their carrier. If that person gets in an accident, they will be fucked in the form of medical debt. One can abuse the ER EMTALA for only a short time. Forgo medical treatment and physical therapy. Temporary injuries then translate into permanent disabilities. Can’t drive. Can’t get insurance. Can’t get a regular job. Can’t afford health insurance. Can’t afford food. It’s a vicious cycle and it’s amazing how most people are able to get out of this situation without doing anything illegal.

freitzkriesler2 3y ago
The article isn't clear on it but a debt related suspension only applies to legal debts to the court like fines or unpaid child support. Medical debt isn't considered in this equation. Still assinine however and is a debtor prison in all but name.
- indymike 3y ago
  False. As soon as a medical debtor has a judgment against them, they can be subject to DRS.
alberth 3y ago
Child Support Important missing context, failure to pay child support is the most common “debt-related drivers license suspension”. This is about creating incentives that help ensure children get the financial support they are entitled via court rulings on their case. https://www.bmv.ohio.gov/susp-other-points.aspx https://www.bmv.ohio.gov/susp-other-points.aspx
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- snypher 3y ago
  With needing a vehicle being an important gateway to income for most, this might be a step too far.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- indymike 3y ago
  First, paying child support is a moral obligation. Second, DRS is stupid (it harms the enforcer of the policy, society, and the person who is not making payments). It removes the ability of the person who is supposed to pay child support from having money to make the payment. The article points out the potential economic fallout of DRS - and there is a connection to tech: Intel is building a huge facility that will employ many Ohioans there and will have a workforce constantly at risk of having their license suspended over unpaid medical bills. The only word that even begins to describe DRS is stupid. Third, child support is only one reason someone may have a DRS. Any payment resulting from a judgment (even administrative) can result in a DRS -- so routine collections often result in suspensions. Child support is only one of many ways someone can find themselves with a suspended license. DRS makes about as much sense as debtor's prisons.
  - chii 3y ago
    exactly. it seems dumb to be taking away the means of repaying the debt from the person as a form of punishment for the debt.
    - Spivak 3y ago
      And it seems dumb because that isn't how it works. I swear there should be a SomePerson's Law that says, "If a currently functioning system can't possibly work that way, then it probably doesn't." Like over the years and years this system has been in place and the many people involved in it y'all really believe no one has thought of this before? You don't just get your license suspended if you stop paying, you get a suspension when you... 1. Stop paying child support. 2. Get a notice of from the government telling you to get in contact with them to set up a hearing to address the non-payment and ignore it. 2b. Set up the hearing, fail to have good reason for non-payment and refuse to negotiate a payment schedule and... 3b. Don't appeal the decision or fail to make your case at the appeal. While with any system involving humans you can get a series of fuck-you-in-particular's there's quite a few checks. It is explicitly the charge of the DCS to keep this very catch-22 from happening by having lots of different enforcement mechanisms and taking the person's finances into account. If you don't have a job and are making a "good faith effort" to get one they won't suspend your license.
- lolinder 3y ago
  Why does that alter the calculus here? It's still a practice that isn't far removed from debtors prison—the incentives we've set up to pay the debt can, if used, actually prevent the debtor from paying their debts. The question isn't whether the debt ought to be paid, it's whether this method of enforcement is counterproductive.
  - P_I_Staker 3y ago
    There's very few tools available, so license suspensions have been just a general purpose tool to annoy people. In cases like child support, I think it probably does work to some extent. They have a ton of people that they think could pay, but are dragging their feet. Would you prefer send them straight to jail? BTW I take the extreme stance against almost all license sanctions. That said, I have to admit without them, and without the threat of jail, many crimes would have little deterrents. Same story IMO with criminal records and going after people's careers. We would need to develop creative new sanctions, and arguably should anyway; but I see no good ideas.
- 0xfaded 3y ago
  The simple solution is to have the government pay out the child support and make the debt to the government.
  - nobody9999 3y ago
    >The simple solution is to have the government pay out the child support and make the debt to the government. AIUI, a number of US states deal with child support in exactly that way: Payments are made to the responsible state agency and they remit the funds to the custodial parent.
- rad_gruchalski 3y ago
  “Think of the children.”
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  Even if the cause is good, the mechanism is a lose-lose. You can’t pay anything if you’ve lost your job because you couldn’t drive to work or are busy in court for driving without a license.
- MisterBastahrd 3y ago
  Nothing says "have money to pay child support" like "don't have money to pay child support because you got fired from your job and have fines for having a suspended license because you were behind on child support." Sorry, but this is insanely counterproductive.
  - sonotathrowaway 3y ago
    You have to view it more like: “how do we hurt poor people and make their lives worse?” And less from a logical perspective.
    - shiroiushi 3y ago
      Exactly. This is the US we're talking about, and figuring out ways to make poor peoples' lives even worse, and increase the wealth gap as much as possible in order to cause social unrest and eventual societal collapse is an integral part of the country's government. They're bent on self-destruction.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Suspending a Dad's driver's license because they fail to pay child support works out well how? Now that they've lost their job (because no drive, no job) and so they have a real excuse for not paying it?
scoofy 3y ago
I ride a bike. Most people can do that, especially folks who aren't paying child support. Obviously there should be a hardship exemption in cases of physical impairment, or a need to travel an extreme distance every day (more than about 30-40 miles). Pretending that it's impossible to live without a car in the United States is an insult to those of us who do it everyday.
- Ancalagon 3y ago
  I'm not sure which area of the country you live in but the vast majority of people in the southwest and southern california likely do not live within walking or biking distance of their places of work.
  - mayneack 3y ago
    I'm not sure what part of the country you live in, but here in southern california a huge number of people live within reasonable car free commute distance. It's almost certainly easier to manage than in Ohio due to the weather and public transit on top of biking. Median commute distance is 10 miles (which is a reasonable e-bike commute depending on route) https://scag.ca.gov/sites/main/files/file-attachments/ej_jhfit_scag_2021trb.pdf?1612993870 https://scag.ca.gov/sites/main/files/file-attachments/ej_jhf... Almost 1 million daily public transit riders: https://www.metro.net/about/l-a-metro-surpasses-900k-daily-riders-in-september-achieves-highest-daily-ridership-since-pandemic/ https://www.metro.net/about/l-a-metro-surpasses-900k-daily-r...
    - michaelmrose 3y ago
      You dont hit the interstate on your bike you cant just take the existing commute and do it on a bike most places. Also Southern CA isnt the country or even very representative. Why did you think virtually nobody commutes via bike?
      - mayneack 3y ago
        The comment I was replying to explicitly used socal as their example of unbikable. That's why I am talking about it. Many socal commutes are unbikable, but not the "vast majority" and even fewer when you extend to other car free options. I biked to work this morning in LA (4 miles of surface streets).
refurb 3y ago
And the courts typically take that into account. It’s not unusual for someone convicted of a crime to be allowed to use a car for work, and work only as a condition of the sentence.
- nobody9999 3y ago
  >And the courts typically take that into account. It’s not unusual for someone convicted of a crime to be allowed to use a car for work, and work only as a condition of the sentence. When I was in college (back before the dawn of time, when dinosaurs ruled the earth -- also known as the late 1980s), one of my fellow students got his second (or third?) DUI (this is also in Ohio, BTW) and had his license suspended -- except to drive to and from work and to drive to and from the local jail where he spent weekends for several months, paying off his debt to society. Which was geared toward making things difficult for my fellow student (weekends in jail, only driving to/from work, etc.) as recompense for the DUIs, while at the same time not destroying his life. Which seems to be the better idea, IMHO. But what do I know, I haven't lived in Pennsyltucky in 30+ years?
  - int_19h 3y ago
    > paying off his debt to society. Paying off one's debt to someone implies that said someone receives something valuable. What value does the society receive from a person spending every weekend in jail? It's just a punishment, there to make them suffer, plain and simple. It has nothing to do with any "debts to society". I wish we'd stop dressing our punitive justice system up in fancy wording like these, or "correctional facilities", so that we can pretend it's something that it's not.
- P_I_Staker 3y ago
  I wouldn't count on that. I think most courts have moved to say "we never care" for fairness, and other reasons.
averageRoyalty 3y ago
Based on this argument then - if driving is so integral - shouldn't the US government provide each citizen a car once they hit whatever age Americans are allowed to drive?
- supertrope 3y ago
  You joke but if you add up the per capita cost of roads and parking mandates, you probably exceed the value of a used car within a few years. Most states spend about twice as much on roads as they take in via fuel tax and registration. The difference is made up via the general budget (income and sales tax). https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/states-road-funding-2019/ https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/states-road-funding.... The Federal gasoline tax has not been raised in 31 years and has lost half its real value. Local zoning laws mandating minimum parking around each building has large implicit costs. Housing shortages. Needing to commute. Car dependency and needing to drive for every single outing. Americans generally disapprove of “handouts” or cash transfers. But if the subsidy is designed as a good or service provided below cost there’s less opposition. If you call it a refundable tax credit it also becomes more palatable.
squigz 3y ago
> It’s a vicious cycle and it’s amazing how most people are able to get out of this situation without doing anything illegal. Do most people though?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
P_I_Staker 3y ago
We simply shouldn't be doing this with cars being so essential to our society. It should be jail or sanctions (driving restrictions). I imagine under this system some extreme repeat offenders would still be banned. Perhaps a few less extreme getting suspensions. Taking someone's license as a general penalty for many offenses is terrible. This has really fed outlaw culture in the USA. I would also like to see public transit options that make this less of an extreme issue. Perhaps this could be achieved in 5-50 years. I don't want to see my friends contemplating suicide after a first offense or considering the legal life to be impossible after one or two more.

by xyst 3y ago

freitzkriesler2 3y ago

The article isn't clear on it but a debt related suspension only applies to legal debts to the court like fines or unpaid child support. Medical debt isn't considered in this equation. Still assinine however and is a debtor prison in all but name.

indymike 3y ago
False. As soon as a medical debtor has a judgment against them, they can be subject to DRS.

alberth 3y ago

Child Support Important missing context, failure to pay child support is the most common “debt-related drivers license suspension”. This is about creating incentives that help ensure children get the financial support they are entitled via court rulings on their case. https://www.bmv.ohio.gov/susp-other-points.aspx https://www.bmv.ohio.gov/susp-other-points.aspx

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
snypher 3y ago
With needing a vehicle being an important gateway to income for most, this might be a step too far.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
indymike 3y ago
First, paying child support is a moral obligation. Second, DRS is stupid (it harms the enforcer of the policy, society, and the person who is not making payments). It removes the ability of the person who is supposed to pay child support from having money to make the payment. The article points out the potential economic fallout of DRS - and there is a connection to tech: Intel is building a huge facility that will employ many Ohioans there and will have a workforce constantly at risk of having their license suspended over unpaid medical bills. The only word that even begins to describe DRS is stupid. Third, child support is only one reason someone may have a DRS. Any payment resulting from a judgment (even administrative) can result in a DRS -- so routine collections often result in suspensions. Child support is only one of many ways someone can find themselves with a suspended license. DRS makes about as much sense as debtor's prisons.
- chii 3y ago
  exactly. it seems dumb to be taking away the means of repaying the debt from the person as a form of punishment for the debt.
  - Spivak 3y ago
    And it seems dumb because that isn't how it works. I swear there should be a SomePerson's Law that says, "If a currently functioning system can't possibly work that way, then it probably doesn't." Like over the years and years this system has been in place and the many people involved in it y'all really believe no one has thought of this before? You don't just get your license suspended if you stop paying, you get a suspension when you... 1. Stop paying child support. 2. Get a notice of from the government telling you to get in contact with them to set up a hearing to address the non-payment and ignore it. 2b. Set up the hearing, fail to have good reason for non-payment and refuse to negotiate a payment schedule and... 3b. Don't appeal the decision or fail to make your case at the appeal. While with any system involving humans you can get a series of fuck-you-in-particular's there's quite a few checks. It is explicitly the charge of the DCS to keep this very catch-22 from happening by having lots of different enforcement mechanisms and taking the person's finances into account. If you don't have a job and are making a "good faith effort" to get one they won't suspend your license.
lolinder 3y ago
Why does that alter the calculus here? It's still a practice that isn't far removed from debtors prison—the incentives we've set up to pay the debt can, if used, actually prevent the debtor from paying their debts. The question isn't whether the debt ought to be paid, it's whether this method of enforcement is counterproductive.
- P_I_Staker 3y ago
  There's very few tools available, so license suspensions have been just a general purpose tool to annoy people. In cases like child support, I think it probably does work to some extent. They have a ton of people that they think could pay, but are dragging their feet. Would you prefer send them straight to jail? BTW I take the extreme stance against almost all license sanctions. That said, I have to admit without them, and without the threat of jail, many crimes would have little deterrents. Same story IMO with criminal records and going after people's careers. We would need to develop creative new sanctions, and arguably should anyway; but I see no good ideas.
0xfaded 3y ago
The simple solution is to have the government pay out the child support and make the debt to the government.
- nobody9999 3y ago
  >The simple solution is to have the government pay out the child support and make the debt to the government. AIUI, a number of US states deal with child support in exactly that way: Payments are made to the responsible state agency and they remit the funds to the custodial parent.
rad_gruchalski 3y ago
“Think of the children.”
Waterluvian 3y ago
Even if the cause is good, the mechanism is a lose-lose. You can’t pay anything if you’ve lost your job because you couldn’t drive to work or are busy in court for driving without a license.
MisterBastahrd 3y ago
Nothing says "have money to pay child support" like "don't have money to pay child support because you got fired from your job and have fines for having a suspended license because you were behind on child support." Sorry, but this is insanely counterproductive.
- sonotathrowaway 3y ago
  You have to view it more like: “how do we hurt poor people and make their lives worse?” And less from a logical perspective.
  - shiroiushi 3y ago
    Exactly. This is the US we're talking about, and figuring out ways to make poor peoples' lives even worse, and increase the wealth gap as much as possible in order to cause social unrest and eventual societal collapse is an integral part of the country's government. They're bent on self-destruction.
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
Suspending a Dad's driver's license because they fail to pay child support works out well how? Now that they've lost their job (because no drive, no job) and so they have a real excuse for not paying it?

scoofy 3y ago

I ride a bike. Most people can do that, especially folks who aren't paying child support. Obviously there should be a hardship exemption in cases of physical impairment, or a need to travel an extreme distance every day (more than about 30-40 miles). Pretending that it's impossible to live without a car in the United States is an insult to those of us who do it everyday.

Ancalagon 3y ago
I'm not sure which area of the country you live in but the vast majority of people in the southwest and southern california likely do not live within walking or biking distance of their places of work.
- mayneack 3y ago
  I'm not sure what part of the country you live in, but here in southern california a huge number of people live within reasonable car free commute distance. It's almost certainly easier to manage than in Ohio due to the weather and public transit on top of biking. Median commute distance is 10 miles (which is a reasonable e-bike commute depending on route) https://scag.ca.gov/sites/main/files/file-attachments/ej_jhfit_scag_2021trb.pdf?1612993870 https://scag.ca.gov/sites/main/files/file-attachments/ej_jhf... Almost 1 million daily public transit riders: https://www.metro.net/about/l-a-metro-surpasses-900k-daily-riders-in-september-achieves-highest-daily-ridership-since-pandemic/ https://www.metro.net/about/l-a-metro-surpasses-900k-daily-r...
  - michaelmrose 3y ago
    You dont hit the interstate on your bike you cant just take the existing commute and do it on a bike most places. Also Southern CA isnt the country or even very representative. Why did you think virtually nobody commutes via bike?
    - mayneack 3y ago
      The comment I was replying to explicitly used socal as their example of unbikable. That's why I am talking about it. Many socal commutes are unbikable, but not the "vast majority" and even fewer when you extend to other car free options. I biked to work this morning in LA (4 miles of surface streets).

refurb 3y ago

And the courts typically take that into account. It’s not unusual for someone convicted of a crime to be allowed to use a car for work, and work only as a condition of the sentence.

nobody9999 3y ago
>And the courts typically take that into account. It’s not unusual for someone convicted of a crime to be allowed to use a car for work, and work only as a condition of the sentence. When I was in college (back before the dawn of time, when dinosaurs ruled the earth -- also known as the late 1980s), one of my fellow students got his second (or third?) DUI (this is also in Ohio, BTW) and had his license suspended -- except to drive to and from work and to drive to and from the local jail where he spent weekends for several months, paying off his debt to society. Which was geared toward making things difficult for my fellow student (weekends in jail, only driving to/from work, etc.) as recompense for the DUIs, while at the same time not destroying his life. Which seems to be the better idea, IMHO. But what do I know, I haven't lived in Pennsyltucky in 30+ years?
- int_19h 3y ago
  > paying off his debt to society. Paying off one's debt to someone implies that said someone receives something valuable. What value does the society receive from a person spending every weekend in jail? It's just a punishment, there to make them suffer, plain and simple. It has nothing to do with any "debts to society". I wish we'd stop dressing our punitive justice system up in fancy wording like these, or "correctional facilities", so that we can pretend it's something that it's not.
P_I_Staker 3y ago
I wouldn't count on that. I think most courts have moved to say "we never care" for fairness, and other reasons.

averageRoyalty 3y ago

Based on this argument then - if driving is so integral - shouldn't the US government provide each citizen a car once they hit whatever age Americans are allowed to drive?

supertrope 3y ago
You joke but if you add up the per capita cost of roads and parking mandates, you probably exceed the value of a used car within a few years. Most states spend about twice as much on roads as they take in via fuel tax and registration. The difference is made up via the general budget (income and sales tax). https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/states-road-funding-2019/ https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/states-road-funding.... The Federal gasoline tax has not been raised in 31 years and has lost half its real value. Local zoning laws mandating minimum parking around each building has large implicit costs. Housing shortages. Needing to commute. Car dependency and needing to drive for every single outing. Americans generally disapprove of “handouts” or cash transfers. But if the subsidy is designed as a good or service provided below cost there’s less opposition. If you call it a refundable tax credit it also becomes more palatable.

squigz 3y ago

> It’s a vicious cycle and it’s amazing how most people are able to get out of this situation without doing anything illegal. Do most people though?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

P_I_Staker 3y ago

We simply shouldn't be doing this with cars being so essential to our society. It should be jail or sanctions (driving restrictions). I imagine under this system some extreme repeat offenders would still be banned. Perhaps a few less extreme getting suspensions. Taking someone's license as a general penalty for many offenses is terrible. This has really fed outlaw culture in the USA. I would also like to see public transit options that make this less of an extreme issue. Perhaps this could be achieved in 5-50 years. I don't want to see my friends contemplating suicide after a first offense or considering the legal life to be impossible after one or two more.