Obey the laws and you want have tickets.
Thousands of NC residents could get driver’s licenses back after settlement approved (msn.com)
Restored licenses in Charlotte area
Under her agency’s license-restoration efforts, Lechner says district attorneys in 14 N.C. counties — including Mecklenburg — have helped restore the driving privileges of thousands of North Carolinians by forgiving their court debt.
While Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s Office was not a party of lawsuit, DA Spencer Merriweather “has long believed that we are far past due in divorcing financial debt from the ability to drive,” according to an office statement to the Observer. Under the office’s Operation Debt Relief, which started in 2019, prosecutors filed motions to forgive debt in some 13,650 cases involving about 11,000 defendants. The effort continues, the statement said.
According to Garrett’s study, license suspensions disproportionately affect minority drivers. While Black residents make up 21% of the state’s driving population, they accounted for 47% of the suspensions in 2013-17 for failure to pay. Whites, who make up almost two-thirds of the state’s drivers had 37% of the suspensions for unpaid tickets and other financial reasons.
A 2021 study by the Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke University, entitled “Driving Injustice,” found that more than 1.2 million N.C. drivers have lost their licenses for either not paying their tickets and court costs, failing to show up in court for their hearings, or a combination of both. That’s 15% of the state’s driving age population. The study analyzed statewide court data from between 1986 and 2018.
According to the study’s co-author, Duke law professor Brandon Garrett, the settlement sidesteps the largest category of victims: the estimated 827,000 drivers who failed to appear in traffic court to answer charges. Many of them either did not know of their hearings or didn’t show up because they couldn’t afford to pay the tickets, Garrett said.
