United States Department of Transportation
i
An Evaluation of the Specific Deterrent Effect of Vehicle Impoundment on Suspended, Revoked and Unlicensed Drivers in California
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1997-11-01
[PDF-5.53 MB]
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Edition:Final report
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Abstract:While license suspension has been shown to be effective, many drivers with suspended (S) or revoked (R) licenses continue to drive illegally, collecting additional citations and becoming involved in crashes. To reduce the occurrence of driving by offenders with S/R licenses and by unlicensed (U) drivers (i.e., those never issued a license), California enacted two laws effective January, 1995. One of these laws, assessed in this study, permits peace officers to arrest S/R/U offenders for driving illegally and to initiate the seizure and impoundment of their vehicles for 30 days. The other law, permitting vehicle forfeiture, was not evaluated because too few vehicles were confiscated. The records of 6327 offenders whose vehicles were impounded were compared to a similar group of 6397 offenders whose vehicles were not impounded. Group comparisons were done by analyzing the driving records of first time (those with no prior driving while suspended or revoked convictions (DWS) or driving while unlicensed (DWU) convictions) and repeat offenders. Over a 1-year period, first offenders whose vehicles were impounded had 23.8 percent fewer (DWS) and (DWU) convictions, 18.1% fewer traffic convictions and 24.7% fewer crashes than first offenders whose vehicles were not impounded. The results were even more impressive for repeat offenders whose vehicles were impounded: they had 34.2% fewer DWS and DWU convictions, 22.3% fewer traffic convictions and 37.6% fewer crashes than repeat offenders whose vehicles were not impounded. The findings provide strong support for impounding vehicles of these types of offenders. /Abstract from report summary page/
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