Who would you rather have driving behind you on the 405 Hwy at 5pm on a Friday:
1) a licensed and insured driver; or 2) an unlicensed, uninsured driver? Well, we got some bad news for you.
Some of those drivers behind you do not have insurance or a drivers license. They may not be able to pay your lost wages if they smash into you.
Maybe there is no insurance company to make a claim against if they bash you. Maybe that driver behind you never took a driving test, or never spent an hour in driver’s ed. Is that OK with you?
You dont get to pick who drives behind you. You need help making sure that driver behind you has insurance, and knows how to drive. But who should help you? Who should provide that protection to the public?
Answer: Your State Government and their Department of Motor Vehicles agency.
How should they do it?
Answer: By Getting as many of the actual drivers as possible to become licensed, competent and insured drivers – without regard to where their legal residence might be.
| Many people without a drivers license know how to drive safely and have money for insurance. They want a drivers license and insurance desperately, but cannot get it because of a combination of institutionalized racism and a lack of public interest vision. It’s time to make a change. |
Currently in California and most states, the government makes sure the legal residents are licensed and insured. Then they ignore the undocumented immigrants driving behind you. They pretend that there are no such drivers. Yet, they are behind you.
Current CA state law requires that all applicants for a Drivers License submit proof of legal presence in the United States. This means that all illegal immigrants in CA are not allowed to get a valid drivers license (unless they have fake documents). They cannot even apply to take the driver’s test, or the DMV eye exam even if they wish to drive legally with insurance.
The proof of legal residency requirement for a drivers license is an off spring of a weird law that makes a Drivers License legal identification AND proof of legal residency at the same time. The simple CA Drivers License is not so simple. It is a barrier to entry. It is a Drivers License with super powers to exclude outsiders from the club. Established racism? Perhaps.
This paradigm makes zero sense if you are driving with people you dont know on the 405 on Friday Night. It is kinda like that strange law that requires Safeway to put beer in a bag to hide it from the public outside in the parking lot.
Illegal Immigrants Are Here; They Will Drive With or Without a Drivers License.
Illegal immigrants are in America. They are here, like it or not. They drive behind you more often than you think. Like it or not, deal with it. And while here, they will to drive to work, and to buy food for their families. There is no way to prevent it.
Why will the unlicensed drive despite the law? Because they have to, there is no other choice for most immigrant families. Most adults living in the US, regardless of where the law says they belong, depend on vehicle transportation to survive. Most people have to drive to a job site for a source of income. They have to drive to buy food for their families. That’s life.
There Is No Way to Prevent Illegal Immigrants From Buying, or Accessing a Car.
Cars are everywhere. They can be borrowed, bought, rented, stolen, and used on American public streets regardless of whether or not the driver is a legal resident of the US. There is no such thing as an illegal alien “detector” for cars, nor a drivers license scanner in the dashboard.
When you add the irresistible force of needing to drive for food and money, and the always available access to a car, you will find a driver. If that driver has a drivers license, he/she will be a legal driver. If that person does not have a drivers license, she/he will be an illegal driver. If he or she is behind you, they are behind you. Either way, they are going to drive.
All Unlicensed Drivers Are Uninsured Drivers.
Without a valid driver’s license, it is impossible to get auto insurance coverage – even if you have the money and want to buy it to protect yourself. What this means to you is that undocumented immigrant drivers do not have auto insurance coverage.
Drivers Without Insurance Are a Danger to the Public.
It is in the public’s interest to make sure that every single driver has valid auto liability insurance. The reason for this is that when an insured driver injuries people, there is a pool of money available to compensate those who are injured. That pool of money is called the insurance company, and they have to pay a covered loss – regardless of the wealth of the negligent driver.
Auto insurance is a way for the public to protect each other from harm or damage that an individual negligent driver cannot pay out of their own pocket or assets.
When people without liability insurance cause collisions and injury people or cause property damage, the money available to the victims is whatever the assets of the negligent driver are.
If Allowed To Get a Drivers License, Most Immigrants Would Apply and Comply.
There are serious penalties for driving without a drivers license. They are ignored due to force of circumstance by those driving without a license, but they do exist. When caught, the unlicensed driver gets cited and must go to court, and may be ordered to pay a fine. But that is not the real harm.
The real harm, the most dreaded penalty for most, comes when the family’s car gets impounded.
If unlicensed drivers knew they could eliminate the danger of sudden impound by becoming licensed, they would have a strong incentive to become licensed ASAP. If a requirement of the licensing process demanded the purchase of a minimum auto liability insurance policy, there would be a very strong motivating force to buy insurance and get licensed.
A Valid Driver’s License Would Give the Government Valuable Info For Catching Wanted Criminals.
By giving an illegal immigrant the opportunity to apply for a valid drivers license, the state is able to collect a huge amount of personal and identifying information. This valuable data would include fingerprints, photos, address, handwriting sample, etc that could be used to identify people involved in crimes. This data could be collected and used for non immigration purposes to great benefit for the public.
A Valid Drivers License Would Force Illegal Immigrants to Learn How to Drive Here.
If an illegal immigrant has no opportunity to apply for a drivers license, there is no need to study for the DMV test. There is no need to learn the signs, or the differences between Tiajuana street laws and the California Vehicle Code.
Without access to a state government’s licensing process, there is no need to study the rules of the road, no need to learn how to parallel park, and there is no incentive to provide the government proof that the person is medically safe to drive.
Allowing Illegal Immigrants to Have Drivers Licenses Would Reduce Wasteful Court Cases.
California, like nearly all states, has a law against driving without a valid drivers license. (Veh. Code 12500(a).) This law makes it a misdemeanor crime to drive without a drivers license.
When an unlicensed person is caught driving, they are subject to arrest and car impound. And a misdemeanor court case starts. Jail time is a possible sentence – and when imposed, the tax payers pay for the jailing costs.
When a person is accused of a misdemeanor crime in CA, like driving without a valid drivers license, if they cannot hire a defense Attorney, they are entitled to use of the Public Defenders at the tax payer’s expense.
My experience also tells me that there is a high frequency of missed court dates on Driving without a License cases, especially among the undocumented immigrant community. My experience tells me that undocumented immigrants are often afraid to go to court on any any case for fear of prosecution as an immigrant.
Then end result is that all CA courts have VC 12500a cases with failure to appear charges and misdemeanor warrants that can never be collected. But still the court maintains the files, tries to pursue unpaid fines, and remains ready at any moment to expend the state’s resources to capture, arrest, and punish these unlicensed failure to appear defendants, all for the simple act of driving.
Drivers Licenses for Illegal Immigrants Would Reduce Uninsured Motorist Claims.
With more of the current drivers on the road insured and licensed, the population of uninsured drivers on the road would decrease. As it decreases, there would be less accidents with uninsured drivers involved. With less uninsured negligent drivers, there would necessarily be less claims against uninsured motorist coverages. (1)
What Has to Be Done?
The drivers license application process is the only way for our government to protect law abiding drivers against those who are unsafe, and uninsured. That drivers license application and screening process should be available to the largest pool of potential drivers possible. To accomplish this, we recommend:
1. Drivers Licenses Should Not Be Proof of Legal Residency or Anything Not Related to Driving.
2. Drivers have to be giving immunity from prosecution for immigration offenses based upon anything they provide in the licensing process.
3. All persons who want to drive in CA legally should be allow to apply for a drivers license regardless of their residency status.
A drivers license should be about where you want to drive, and how you drive. It should not be about where you are supposed to live.
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Footnotes:
(1) We are assuming here that the number of UM policies out there would remain the same. Since this is an optional coverage in CA, the number of UM policies is variable, and certainly has many variables. But it also seems that the number of UM policies bought by consumers would be related to, and driven by, the population of uninsured motorists known to be on the roadways.
