Sounds like 75% of people with a suspended license need to spend some time out in jail where they can ponder their life choices.
“A significant association was found between all reasons for DWVL and the risk of causing a road crash. This association was particularly high for drivers with a suspended license and drivers who had never obtained a license. In these subgroups of drivers, the proportion of the relationship explained by high-risk driving behaviors is high” [1].
If the license was suspended for financial reasons, sure. If it was suspended for driving infractions, incapacitating them by putting them in jail while deterring others from driving seems socially efficient.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00014...
"Among church attendees, those attending church services in a prison were more likely to be convicted of a crime in the future than the average"
I too can mislead with sampling bias.
Nobody with a double digit number of brain cells is going to be impressed that a group that includes a lot of people who lost their licenses is going to be more crashy than the average. The average has a lot more people in it to water down the statistical effect of those people. But that doesn't mean that a lot of people in your "bad" group are actually bad on an individual level rather than a statistical one.
Pretty much every license suspension is for financial reasons at the end of the day because people who can afford lawyers and fines and whatnot are much more able to avoid the suspensions.
What about a child molester that works in a school? It makes sense to prevent them from being in contact with children. I think preventing people from driving saves the public from similar potentially dangerous harm.
Many states also have special use permits for the case of needing to drive to work.
Also, everyone I personally know who drives with suspended licenses has the ability to get 99% of places they need to go by bus. Like we all did before we were old enough to drive. They just don't want to have to wait for a bus or walk a block or two, so they don't.
PS- I wish I didn't know these waste of space people, I don't get to choose my family. I would choose different people.
Should I go to jail?
One critical example is the National City Lines conspiracy. Backed by the totally expected actors General Motors, Firestone, Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, and others, this group bought up efficient electric streetcar systems across the country. They were found guilty of criminally conspiring to monopolize the sale of buses and supplies to these captive transit lines. Their actions effectively destroyed electric rail to force dependency on fossil fuel buses and private automobiles; this was manipulation, not free market competition.
Furthermore, post war suburban planning deliberately engineered car dependency. Low density sprawl, mandated parking minimums, and strict separation of housing from jobs and services made car ownership non negotiable. This planning functioned explicitly as a "means test", using the requirement of car ownership to enforce segregation and keep lower income populations out of these new communities. This represents a significant shift, as most Americans relied heavily on non automotive transport until the mid 20th century.
This dependency was cemented by massive government bias towards cars. Trillions were poured into building roads and highways like the Interstate system, representing a huge subsidy for driving. Meanwhile, public transit and passenger rail systems were systematically starved of equivalent investment, left to decline, or dismantled altogether.
Therefore, the "big country" argument fails logically. If sheer size dictated transport, why not advocate for air travel, being far faster than driving cross country? The car's chokehold is strongest for daily commutes and regional travel, precisely the areas where robust public transit could thrive if it had not been actively undermined or neglected in favor of automobile ownership. The car isn't the default because it naturally "beats" other options in a large country, it is the default because the system was deliberately shaped over decades to ensure its dominance at the expense of efficiency, equity, and alternatives.
To what extent should this right be regulated? Should children be allowed to drive? Drunk people? Senile people?
Suspending licenses is a punishment that doesn't work and can never work for anyone in most cities who isn't a well-connected suburban teenager who has parents and a network of friends to drive them around. And a lot of courts know this which is why a full suspended license is getting less common and basically is they've become a ban on "non-essential driving."
People shouldn’t speed, and they shouldn’t drive with a suspended license, but it’s hard to ignore the reality that not driving isn’t an actual option for a lot of people.