A: On my daily walks I’ve noticed a large increase in outdated license tabs, some of them for more than a year. Is there a fine for not renewing? It doesn’t seem fair as I thought our State needs the money for our infrastructure.
A: If you ask a traffic safety guy about revenue, you’re probably not going to get the answer you’re looking for. Yes, there is a fine for not renewing, and yes, our state needs money for infrastructure. But what I really want to know is, do drivers of unregistered vehicles crash more often? And to go even broader, let’s take a look at what I’m calling the ‘uns’: unlicensed, untrained, uninsured, and unregistered.
Unlicensed drivers are twice as likely to drive impaired and speed compared to licensed drivers. They’re three times more likely to be at fault in a fatal crash. Unlicensed drivers involved in a fatal crash are seven times more likely to have had a previous DUI conviction. Even though the numbers are shocking this shouldn’t be a surprise. Over half of unlicensed drivers don’t have a license because it was suspended or revoked for dangerous driving.
Young drivers crash more than any other age demographic, but even within that group there’s one factor that makes a big difference: driver training. For 16 and 17-year-olds, driver education is required to obtain a license. Once you reach 18, you can get a license without an approved driver training course, assuming you can pass the test. Drivers who get their license at 18 are involved in over 50 percent more serious injury and fatal crashes in their first year of driving compared to 16 and 17-year-olds. This disparity continues through at least age 25. (And maybe longer, but that’s where my data ends.) After reviewing the crash data, the question we should be asking is, “Why are we licensing people who have had no training?”
The problem of uninsured drivers isn’t just increased insurance rates for the rest of us. Uninsured drivers are nearly five times more likely to be involved in an injury crash compared to insured drivers, and they’re more likely to be the driver at fault. Why? The hypothesis here is that people who are willing to risk driving uninsured are also willing to take other driving risks at rates greater than insured drivers.
What about drivers of unregistered vehicles? Compared to the other uns, this one doesn’t seem to have much connection to traffic safety. Sure, license plates help to report risky drivers and track stolen vehicles, but the annual renewal part is primarily a tax to pay for our roads. Vehicle registration fees are the bulk of the ‘licenses, permits, and fees’ category that contributes to 29 percent of Washington’s transportation revenue. Driving a vehicle with expired tabs is a traffic infraction, and parking a vehicle that’s been unregistered for more than 45 days on a public street can get it towed, but the lack of a current year sticker on a license plate shouldn’t increase crash rates, right? Wrong, apparently.
It’s not the car, of course. Some people might have expired registrations because they forgot to renew, and they’re no more of a risk than if they’d remembered. But overall, drivers of unregistered cars are more likely to have a history of traffic violations. They’re also more likely to have a suspended license and, as mentioned earlier, suspended drivers crash a lot more than the rest of us.
If ‘un’ is part of the description of you or your vehicle, you’re probably at greater risk of a crash.