Impact of Ohio Administrative License Suspension

Abstract

This report covers an analysis of the driving records of Ohio’s 45,788 drivers who were convicted of driving under the influence (DUI) between July 1, 1990, and August 30, 1995, to determine the specific deterrent impact of the Ohio administrative license suspension (ALS**) law on DUI recidivism. Our data support the conclusion that, under the ALS law, license suspensions were earlier and more certain. Consequently, the number of drunk-driving convictions, moving offenses, and crashes of first and multiple DUI offenders were significantly reduced in the 2 years after their arrest for DUI.

Incapacitation through license suspension has proven to be the most practical and effective sanction for protecting the driving public. Suspension has been shown to reduce both instances of driving under the influence and, more importantly, crashes (Peck, Sadler, & Perrine, 1985). However, the effectiveness of license suspension has been limited in two ways: (1) A significant proportion of offenders delay or avoid suspension when this remedy is applied by the courts, either through delaying the adjudication process or through plea bargaining. (2) Unlicensed driving is difficult to enforce because police officers cannot determine if a driver is licensed unless they can stop a vehicle and require the driver to present his or her driving permit. Delays in the adjudication process have led to passage of ALS laws that allow the arresting officer to seize the license at the time of apprehension and forward it to the motor vehicle department, which, after providing an opportunity for a hearing, suspends the license. The criminal prosecution proceeds on an independent track.

The difficulty in enforcing license suspension has resulted in unlicensed drivers generally being apprehended only when they commit another offense or are caught at a checkpoint. Partially due to this low probability of apprehension, it has been estimated that up to 75% of DUI offenders drives to some extent while suspended (Hagen, McConnell, & Williams, 1980; Ross & Gonzales, 1988). Thus, despite the supposed inconvenience associated with license suspension, at least half of those who receive suspensions for a drunk-driving offense do not reinstate their licenses when they become eligible. Many suspended DUI offenders do not reinstate their licenses for several years (Voas & McKnight, 1986; Voas & Tippetts, 1994). As a result, states with active DUI enforcement programs have large numbers of drivers suspended for DUI who have not reinstated. The California Department of Motor Vehicles, for example, estimates that the state has one million suspended operators.

Currently, 39 states have ALS laws to protect the public by suspending the license of a DUI suspect who refuses the blood alcohol concentration (BAC) test or provides a test over the state BAC limit. Two national studies have demonstrated that these laws have a general deterrent effect on the driving public as a whole, which results in a reduction in the number of alcohol-related fatal crashes. Zador, Lund, Fields, and Weinberg (1988) found a 9% reduction in the number of drivers involved in fatal crashes during nighttime hours in eight states that had enacted ALS laws. Klein (1989) reported a decrease of 6% in alcohol-related crashes in 17 states after they implemented ALS laws. Ross (1987) reported a reduction of 5% to 9% (depending on measure used) in nighttime crashes in New Mexico after enactment of an ALS law; similar reductions were found in Minnesota and Delaware. The largest reduction in alcohol-related fatalities related to the introduction of an ALS law was 41% in Oklahoma (Johnson, 1986).

While there is a large body of evidence that license suspension is effective in reducing the recidivism of DUI offenders, less evidence is available on the specific impact of administrative, as compared to court-ordered, forms of suspension on DUI recidivism. Stewart and Ellingstad (1989) studied the impact of 30-day ALS suspensions on DUI recidivism in three states and found that implementation of the law reduced recidivism in two of the three states. More recently, Beirness, Simpson, Mayhew, and Jonah (1997) evaluated an ALS law enacted in the Canadian province of Manitoba, which provided for a 90-day suspension, and found that recidivism over the 4 years following a DUI offense was reduced from 22.7% to 12.8% after enactment of the ALS law. They also found that other traffic offenses were reduced and that the period between offense and trial was shortened as the offenders could no longer delay license suspension by finding ways to delay the adjudication of their offense.

In September 1993, the state of Ohio simultaneously implemented two laws designed to increase the effectiveness of license suspension to reduce the risk posed by those convicted of impaired driving. One was the vehicle immobilization or impoundment law; the other was the ALS law. A report on vehicle immobilization or impoundment law appeared in the proceedings of the AAAM (Voas, Tippetts, & Taylor, 1996, 1997). This report evaluates the ALS portion of that legislation, which provided for the immediate administrative suspension of the license of a driver apprehended for DUI. The suspension begins on the day of arrest and continues for 3 months for first offenders (with the court authorized to add 3 more months upon conviction) and 1 to 3 years for multiple offenders. The lengths of driver license sanctions were increased for some offenders under the new ALS law: suspension for first offenders from 90 to 180 days and for third offenders from 1 to 2 years. The length of suspension for second offenders, however, was not changed.

As in other states and before the ALS law was implemented, Ohio’s traffic courts had the principal authority to order suspension of the driving license. As a result, there was considerable delay between arrest for a DUI offense and implementation of the suspension sanction. Further, a sizeable portion of convicted offenders avoided license suspension through court programs that applied treatment and other sanctions instead of license suspension. When DUI offenders were arrested before ALS, their licenses were picked up by the officers and forwarded to the court. The driver received a ticket that allowed him or her to drive until the court acted. Following case disposition, the court established the length of license sanction and notified the Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV), which imposed the suspension. The suspension period for first offenders during the 3 years before the ALS law was nominally 90 days, while the suspension period for a second or third offender was 1 year.

METHODS

To conduct this evaluation, the full driving records of all DUI convictions recorded between July 1, 1990, and August 30, 1995, were drawn from the Ohio BMV license files. This yielded an analysis file of 45,788 drivers with a total of 61,502 DUI or implied consent convictions. These could be separated into two groups: (1) 32,889 drivers with 42,715 convictions who offended before, and (2) 17,173 drivers with 18,787 convictions who offended after the ALS law was implemented in September 1993. Included in these two groups were 4,274 drivers who committed DUI or implied consent offenses in both the before and after periods. Using these data, three studies were conducted: (1) an analysis of the impact of license suspension before the ALS law was implemented; (2) an analysis of the change in time until imposition of license suspension, after the ALS law was implemented; and (3) an analysis of the change in recidivism of DUI offenders after the ALS law was implemented.

a. To determine the overall effectiveness of license suspension in Ohio before implementing the ALS law, we used a subset of the total Ohio analysis file containing driving records of all licensed drivers convicted of a DUI offense between July 1, 1990, and July 1, 1993. Thus, the study included only offenses and crashes of drivers within 3 years of their index DUI offense. For this study, drivers were entered in the analysis file in the month of their first DUI offense. Each month, all drivers in the analysis file were classified into one of two groups depending on whether they were suspended or fully licensed during that month. When the license status changed, the driver was moved to the opposite group in the following month.

The percentage of each license status group (suspended and reinstated) committing a DUI offense, a moving traffic offense, or being involved in a crash during each month was determined. Because the number of these license record entries was expected to vary with the prior driving record, the groups were analyzed separately by the number of prior DUI offenses: those with one, two, and three-plus. The period from July 1, 1990, to July 1,1993, provided 36 paired monthly samples for licensed versus suspended drivers according to the number of prior DUI offenses. These data were analyzed using a paired sample test for each of the three dependent variables: DUI offenses, moving traffic offenses, and crashes. Using the paired sample test controlled for seasonal and long-term linear trends in the data.

b. We studied delays in implementing license suspension from September 1, 1990, to August 30, 1993 (the pre-ALS period in Ohio) using the Kaplan-Meier (1958) survival analysis. This permits the comparison of survival curves without the limitation of assuming that one curve is a constant proportion of the comparison curve, thereby allowing a more general comparison of survival curves. Differences between survival curves were tested using the Tarone-Ware statistic.

c. To measure the impact of the ALS law on the driving records of DUI offenders, we compared the period beginning with a DUI arrest and ending up to 2 years following arrest for offenders arrested between 1990 and 1993 (the pre-ALS period) and September 1993 to August 30, 1995 (the post-ALS period). To help separate the effects of the ALS law from the effects of the Vehicle Impoundment Law (VIL), first-offense DUIs who were only affected by the ALS law were analyzed separately from multiple offenders affected by both laws. We used survival analysis, the most effective method for comparing reoffense rates before and after implementing the ALS law.

The data set on DUI offenders obtained from the Ohio BMV did not include all crashes in the state, so it did not provide a means of determining the general deterrent affect of the VIL and ALS laws. For this purpose, data from the NHTSA’s Fatal Analysis Reporting System (FARS) from January 1988 to December 1996 was used. A time series of all drivers in fatal crashes tested for alcohol with a known result in Ohio was compared with a similar series for the remaining 49 states. The change from before to after the September 1993 implementation of the two laws was compared using Box and Tiao (1975) time-series analysis.

RESULTS

SIGNIFICANCE OF LICENSE SUSPENSION

Figure 1 and Table 1 present the results of the comparison of the 36 monthly percentage of drivers in the licensed and suspended groups committing a DUI or implied consent offense before the ALS law. The results are presented separately by number of prior DUI offenses. As can be seen, the average monthly rate of DUI offenses for the suspended offenders is significantly (p<.001) below that of the DUI offenders who have full driving privileges. The mean reduction in percentage of offenses (upper portion of Table 1) is 36% to 43% of the mean level of offense for the licensed offenders. As would be expected, the average monthly percentage of DUI or implied consent offenses are greater for the groups with more DUIs on their records.

Fig. 1.

Average monthly DUI offense rates for licensed (dark bars) and suspended (light bars) DUI offenders with one, two, or three-plus prior offenses

Table 1.

Mean differences between licensed and suspended DUI offenders across 36 monthly offense rates, September 1990 through August 1993, before implementing ALS and VIL laws in Ohio

Licensed minus suspended by # of DUIs	Paired differences in DUI offenses		t	df	Sig. (two-tailed)
	Mean difference over 36 months	Std. Error mean
1 DUI	.00673	.00036	18.652	35	<.001
2 DUIs	.01274	.00119	10.693	35	<.001
3 or more DUIs	.01390	.00268	5.189	35	<.001
Licensed minus suspended by # of DUIs	Paired differences in moving VIOLATION frequencies		t	df	Sig. (two- tailed)
	Mean difference over 36 months	Std. Error mean
1 DUI	.00390	.00064	6.112	35	<.001
2 DUIs	.00645	.00077	8.339	35	<.001
3 or more DUIs	.00700	.00144	4.846	35	<.001
Licensed minus suspended by # of DUIs	Paired differences in CRASH frequencies		t	df	Sig. (two-tailed)
	Mean difference over 36 months	Std. error mean
1 DUI	.00312	.00040	7.714	35	<.001
2 DUIs	.00354	.00059	5.979	35	.<001
3 or more DUIs	.00431	.00116	3.706	35	.001

The middle section of Table 1 shows the moving violation rates for those suspended compared to the fully licensed DUI offenders. As with DUI offenses, the suspended offenders have a smaller (p<.001) average monthly proportion of moving violations. They also have a smaller (p≤.001) proportion of drivers involved in crashes as shown in the lower section of Table 1. While drivers falling within these groups are heterogeneous and self-selection factors play a significant role in forming group membership, a comparison of the offenses and crash rates of the unlicensed and licensed drivers provides the state with a measure of the effectiveness of its licensing program and support for devoting resources to enforcing license suspension and vehicle immobilization or impoundment programs.

The effect of employing license suspension as a court sanction in Ohio during the 3 years (September 1, 1990, to August 30, 1993, before the ALS law was implemented) is illustrated in the lower two lines of Figure 2. This figure displays the proportion of offenders who were suspended within a given time following their arrest for DUI. The figure is constructed by determining the date of arrest for each individual apprehended for DUI or implied consent refusal during the 3 years from September 1, 1990, to August 30, 1993, and then determining the date when a corresponding license suspension was recorded.

Fig. 2.

Percentage of first and multiple offenders suspended following apprehension for DUI before and after ALS law

Figure 2 indicates that some cases were tried in the first month after arrest; however, by the sixth month, barely more than half of the first offenders had received a suspension. Even after 24 months, four in ten of these offenders had not yet received a suspension. This was apparently the result of some courts choosing not to suspend first offenders in view of other sanctions being imposed. (Ohio has a 3-day mandatory jail sentence for first offenders.) In some cases, probation included limited driving privileges even when no suspension was ordered. Since only convictions are recorded on a driver’s record, none of those who were not suspended had been judged not guilty. If they had been, they would not appear in this data set.

Suspension was more likely for a second than for a first offender with eight in ten receiving a suspension within 6 months; however, even here, 15% of the convicted offenders avoided suspension during the 2 years following their arrest for DUI. Thus, before the ALS law, license suspension was not applied to a significant segment of those apprehended for impaired driving. Moreover, there was a significant delay between the day of arrest and the day on which the suspension became effective, running from 1 to 6 months for most multiple DUI offenders who were ultimately suspended.

Before initiation of the ALS law in September 1993, the nominal length of suspension for first DUI offenders was 90 days. Many of the first offenders who received suspensions, however, did not reinstate their licenses when they became eligible to do so. As a result, the actual length of suspension was much longer than 90 days. In fact, the mean length of suspension was 862 days, or more than 2 years. Thus, the significance of imposing even the relatively short 90-day suspension on first offenders before the ALS law was greater than would be expected from the nominal length of the sanction. This is shown in Figure 3 and Table 2. The first offenders who did not receive a suspension in the 2 years following their arrest had more DUI offenses than those first offenders who did receive a license sanction. While much of the difference in survival curves occurred in the first 4 months following arrest, a separate survival analysis demonstrated that those who were never suspended continued to have higher reoffense rates from the 7^th to the 24^th month after the date of their offense, compared to first offenders who did receive a suspension. Thus, failure to apply the license sanction to first DUI offenders increased the likelihood that they would become second offenders.

Fig. 3.

Comparison of DUI survival curve for the 60% of first DUI offenders who received the suspension sanction with the survival curve for the 40% who were never suspended

Table 2.

Comparison of DUI survival curve for the 60% of first DUI offenders who received suspension sanction with survival curve for the 40% who were never suspended

License status	Total	Tarone-Ware	Sig
License suspended	11234	266.93	<.001
	14928
Totals	26162

IMPACT OF ALS ON DUI RECIDIVISM

Returning to Figure 2, the top line demonstrates the contrast in the speed and certainty of the imposition of the suspension penalty after, compared to before, the ALS law became effective in September 1993. This shows the proportion of offenders suspended, by month, from September 1, 1993, to August 30, 1995. There is no difference between first and multiple offenders in the timing of the suspension or in the proportion receiving a suspension. The ALS law began the suspension period on the day of arrest. This appeared to have occurred in 95% of all first and multiple DUI offenders.

Figure 4 and Table 3 provide separate survival curves and results of the Tarone-Ware test statistic for individuals with one DUI offense and those with two or more DUI offenses before, compared to after, the ALS law. In the 1990 to 1993 period, first DUI offenders demonstrated an approximate 15% attrition rate over 24 months following their arrest (see Figure 4). After implementation of the ALS law, this attrition rate was cut by almost two thirds, 5% over 24 months. The probability that such a large change could occur by chance is less than one in one thousand. For multiple offenders, the change was even greater. Over the 2 years following arrest before the law, multiple offenders had a DUI recidivism rate of 25% (see Figure 4). This was reduced to 7% following implementation of the ALS law.

Fig. 4.

DUI survival curves for first and multiple offenders before and after the ALS and VIL laws

Table 3.

Tarone-Ware survival analyses

DUI offenses before versus after implementation of ALS law
Offender group	Number of offenders	Tarone-Ware	P
Before law: 1st DUI	28546	462.55	<.001
After law: 1st DUI	11028
Before law: repeat DUI	5999	314.85	<.001
After law: repeat DUI	3031
Totals	48604
Moving violations before versus after implementation of ALS law
Offender group	Number of offenders	Tarone-Ware	P
Before law: 1st DUI	28546	292.00	<.001
After law: 1st DUI	11028
Before law: repeat DUI	5999	97.39	<.001
After law: repeat DUI	3031
Totals	48604
Crashes before versus after implementation of ALS law
Offender group	Number of offenders	Tarone-Ware	P
Before law: 1st DUI	28545	121.48	<.001
After law: 1st DUI	11028
Before law: repeat DUI	5999	62.45	<.001
After law: repeat DUI	3031
Totals	48603

The curves in Figure 4 show that before the ALS law was implemented, there were relatively large numbers of reoffenses for both first and multiple offenders during the first 6 months corresponding to the time between arrest and court conviction for the DUI offense. During this period, many of those that were ultimately suspended remained fully licensed and free to drive (see Figure 2). This freedom to continue to drive apparently resulted in high DUI reoffense rates. Following application of the ALS law when the license was suspended on the day of arrest, this early drop in the survival rate disappears for both first and multiple offenders, and reoffenses occur more gradually over 2 years.

The issue arises as to whether the difference between the before and after recidivism records is accounted for principally by this early 6-month period during which, before the law, most offenders were free to drive or whether, if one considers only the period following the initial 6 months, there is still a significant difference in recidivism rates. As can be seen in Figure 4, during the period beyond 6 months, the curves for the “before” and “after” groups continue to diverge. A test of the significance of the differences in survival rates after 6 months using the Kaplan-Meier analysis procedure demonstrated that the ALS and VIL laws resulted in lower recidivism during the 6- to 24-month postperiod after these laws were implemented.

The driving records of DUIs apprehended before and after implementation of the ALS law were also examined to determine whether the change in the timing and comprehensiveness of suspension impacted the number of moving violations committed by DUI offenders. While the survival curves for moving violations are not shown, they demonstrated that before ALS 20% of the first DUI offenders had a moving violation on their records in the 24 months following their DUI arrest; after ALS, only 9% of the first offenders were cited for a moving violation within 24 months of their DUI arrest. For multiple offenders, the moving violation rate in the 24 months following arrest before the law was 28% compared to 15% after implementing the ALS law. The Tarone-Ware statistic from the survival analysis shown in Table 3 demonstrated that these differences were statistically significant beyond the one in one thousand level.

Along with moving violations, we also examined the records of individuals committing DUI offenses before and after implementing the new law to determine the number of crash involvements during the 2 years following the index DUI conviction. Survival curves (which are not presented) demonstrated that before the law, 12% of first offenders and 14% of repeat offenders were crash involved during the 2 years following their DUI offense; after September 1993, only 5% of first offenders and 7% of repeat offenders were crash involved during that period. Again, as shown in the lower section of Table 3, these differences were highly significant based on the Tarone-Ware test of their survival curves with the probability of such differences being found by chance being less than one in one thousand (see lower section of Table 3).

Table 4 provides the results of the time-series analysis of FARS data from 1988 to 1996 on the proportion of all drivers in fatal crashes who were measured for alcohol with a known result and had a positive BAC in Ohio compared to the other 49 states. Analysis of the series demonstrated that there was an 18.5% decline from before to after the implementation of the VA and ALS laws in September 1993 in the proportion of drivers with positive BACs in Ohio compared to only a 4.1% decline in the other 49 states.

Table 4.

Time-series analyses of the proportion of drivers in fatal crashes tested for alcohol with a known result who had BACs >.00 in Ohio compared to the other 49 states, before versus after September 1993

State	Change	b	Std. error (b)	Difference: bOhio − bUSA49	Pooled Std. error (b)	t	p
Ohio	−18.5%	−.20416	.04393	−.1628	.04818	3.38	.001
Other 49	−4.1%	−.04135	.01977

DISCUSSION

Three considerations should be kept in mind in interpreting the results described above. (1) The ALS law was implemented simultaneously with legislation strengthening and extending a vehicle impoundment and immobilization law affecting unlicensed drivers and multiple DUI offenders. (2) Another legislative act implemented at the same time provided for shifting the trials of multiple offenders from the lower mayor’s courts to the higher municipal courts. (3) With new legislation, it is possible that the level of DUI enforcement will increase due to the publicity surrounding the new laws. Each of these potentially conflicting factors were investigated as part of the comprehensive report submitted to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (Voas, Tippetts, & Taylor, under review). The report concluded that these three factors could not account for the results presented above.

(1) Simultaneous implementation of two laws

The impoundment or immobilization law did not apply to first offenders. Therefore, the reduction shown in the recidivism of first offenders in Figure 4 cannot be attributed to the impoundment legislation, unless one hypothesizes that the threat of losing the vehicle if an offender commits a second DUI reduces the drinking-and-driving behavior following the first offense. The larger difference for the second offenders who were subject to the impoundment law (but only approximately one third of whom received a vehicle action) should probably be attributed to the combined effects of the two laws.

(2) Change in court venue

Legislation shifting the responsibility for multiple offenders from the lower mayor’s courts to the higher municipal courts, raised the possibility that some cases involving multiple offenders would be lost in the transition producing a spuriously low rate of reconviction for multiple offenders. The data set used for this investigation contained information on the court in which the multiple offenders were convicted. When these data were analyzed using time-series analysis, it was demonstrated that, despite the intention of the law, the number of multiple offenders being adjudicated in the mayor’s courts did not change during the period of this study. On the other hand, there was a reduction in the proportion of municipal court cases (400 cases per month in municipal courts compared with 50 cases per month in mayor’s courts) corresponding to the reduced recidivism shown in Figure 4. Thus, there was no evidence that this change in venue for multiple offenders had a significant impact on the current results.

(3) Increase in enforcement activity

Finally, it was possible that the statewide enforcement of DUI laws would be affected by the publicity campaigns associated with implementation of the ALS and vehicle impoundment laws. This could lead to more drivers being charged with DUI and, in turn, more convictions for DUI. While arrest data were not available, it was possible to examine convictions of first-time offenders who would not be directly affected by the impoundment or ALS law. Statewide monthly conviction rates for individuals receiving their first DUI was studied from July 1990 to August 1995 to determine whether there was evidence of a significant change in the conviction level concomitant with the implementation of the ALS law. Analysis of this time series demonstrated that there was no change at the time the new laws were implemented in September 1993. Thus, there was no indication that the police intensified their DUI enforcement effort, though this cannot be ruled out because there was no direct measure of enforcement intensity.

(4) General deterrent effect

This study evaluates the specific deterrent effect of the ALS law. It is important to recognize that the major reason most proponents have supported ALS is for its general deterrent effect on the driving public rather than its specific deterrent effect on DUI offenders. Both the studies by Klein (1989) and Zador, Lund, Fields, and Weinberg (1988) demonstrated such a general deterrent effect in statewide alcohol-related fatal crash reductions in states enacting ALS laws.

Analysis of the FARS data for those drivers in fatal crashes with a known BAC (Table 4) provides strong evidence that the new legislation, which became effective in September 1993, reduced the number of drinking drivers in fatal crashes. Because the VA and ALS laws were implemented simultaneously, it is not possible to determine the relative contribution of each law to this reduction. However, the result is consistent with the earlier studies of ALS by Klein (1989), Zador et al. (1988), and Beirness et al. (1997).

The data provided above demonstrates that, before the ALS law was implemented in September 1993, many Ohio drivers convicted of DUI escaped license suspension. Even for those who received this sanction, there was frequently a delay of up to 6 months after the impaired driving arrest. Implementation of the ALS law clearly changed this situation. After September 1993, 95% of both first and multiple DUI arrestees received a license suspension beginning on the day of apprehension, and 99% were ultimately suspended. The earlier, more certain suspension of DUI offenders appears to have reduced the level of DUI recidivism and the number of crash involvements of first and multiple DUI offenders. A potentially important finding was that the reduction was not limited just to DUI recidivism but also produced a lower crash involvement rate. This is consistent with the study by Beirness, Simpson, Mayhew, and Jonah (1997) in the Province of Manitoba, which found not only a reduction in DUI recidivism related to the ALS law, but also a reduction in crash involvements. From the initial implementation of an ALS law in the state of Minnesota, it has generally been assumed that the earlier and surer imposition of a license sanction would have a specific deterrent effect on DUI offenders. However, research attention has tended to focus more on the general deterrent effects of ALS laws with relatively few studies of the specific deterrent effects on the offenders themselves. The current study attempts to fill that gap.