Drivers in New York state were issued more than 1 million license suspensions in 2017, and about two-thirds of them were for “traffic debt” – failure to pay a traffic ticket or to appear in traffic court – while less than 10% were for driving infractions.
Researchers from the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy combined suspension records from the state Department of Motor Vehicles with drivers’ ZIP code data from the Census and found that drivers in communities that had large Black, Hispanic and socioeconomically disadvantaged populations were disproportionately impacted by both nonpayment and noncompliance suspensions.
They also used statistical modeling to predict the effect of eliminating such license suspensions, and determined that racial and economic disparity could be significantly reduced.