California leads the nation in the number of undocumented immigrants living in the state, accounting for 2,570,000 of the 10.8 million people illegally residing in the United States in 2010, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Given that the state requires people to provide a Social Security number and proof of residency to obtain a driver’s license, this population undoubtedly contributes to the incidence of unlicensed driving.
With some organizations estimating that unlicensed drivers cause 20 percent of fatal car accidents, authorities, safety advocates, and lawyers in Orange, Los Angeles, and other California counties have proposed that the state change its policy toward undocumented immigrant drivers.
Several studies have suggested that unlicensed drivers pose a traffic safety risk. According to the L.A. Police Protective League, 20 percent of fatal crashes are attributable to unlicensed drivers. In 2000, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety released a study called Unlicensed to Kill, which indicated that 13.8 percent of all drivers involved in fatal crashes between the years of 1993 and 1997 did not have a driver’s license, had an invalid license, or their license status was unknown. When the Foundation updated its findings in 2008, it found that one disturbing trend had not changed: unlicensed drivers or those without a valid license accounted for one of every five fatal crashes.
An accident that recently occurred in South Los Angeles illustrates the traffic safety risk unlicensed drivers pose. On February 3rd, 2012 an unlicensed driver was traveling in the 1400 block of West Florence Avenue when she crashed into a tree, seriously injuring all of the vehicle’s six occupants. Three of the passengers died from their injuries. According to the California Highway Patrol, the woman had been cited for driving without a license in January, but her car was not impounded.
Under California law, when a person is caught driving without a license or with a suspended or revoked license, authorities may impound his or her vehicle for 30 days. Since undocumented immigrants are unable to obtain a driver’s license, they tend to represent a large percentage of the drivers who lose their vehicles to the impound yard for a month or, in many cases, permanently. Car owners must pay $1,500 or more to retrieve their vehicle; those who cannot pay lose their vehicles, which tow operators generally sell at lien sales, according to the nonprofit investigative reporting group California Watch.
After several reports by California Watch and other news agencies that the majority of citations issued at DUI checkpoints were for unlicensed driving—28,000 citations for unlicensed driving compared to 7,000 for drunken driving—legislators enacted a law that would prohibit police at sobriety checkpoints from towing the vehicles of unlicensed drivers. The measure has the potential to ease the burden the checkpoints had previously imposed on unlicensed drivers, especially undocumented immigrants.
The new law marks a change in California’s approach toward undocumented immigrant drivers, one that authorities, lawyers, and safety advocates in Orange, Los Angeles, and other counties have suggested may not be enough. Among them is LA police chief Charlie Beck, who supports the issuance of driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, claiming that subjecting them to testing will ensure they are educated in the state’s traffic safety laws. In an interview with Los Angeles Times reporters, Beck also said that licensing undocumented immigrants would prevent them from fleeing the scene of car accidents.
While many Californians oppose providing licenses to undocumented immigrants, the high incidence of vehicles seized from them in past sobriety checkpoints is an indicator that they are driving on the state’s roads and highways. Ensuring that they know the rules and laws and have passed a driving test by issuing them licenses, even if provisional, seems likely to improve safety.
