It’s about to get more expensive to get pulled over for a traffic violation in New York State. Starting Monday, February 16, the state will increase the number of points given for various traffic offenses, some of which had no points penalties in the past.
Under the current system, drivers who accumulate 11 points in 18 months could lose their license to drive. The new system lengthens the time to 24 months. Offenses such as aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle or drunken/drugged driving offenses carried no points because they are misdemeanors with separate punishments. Now, those offenses will also carry 11 point penalties, which will trigger a hearing that could result in license revocation.
Higher points will also mean higher costs. The state levies an additional fine, called an assessment, on drivers at certain levels of points. Accumulating seven points will require a driver to take and pay for a safety class.
“These updated regulations will have no impact on drivers who follow the rules of the road, but they will have a big impact on dangerous drivers and repeat offenders whose poor choices always put other drivers, passengers, and pedestrians at risk,” said state Department of Motor Vehicles Commissioner and Chair of the Governor’s Traffic Safety Committee Mark J.F. Schroeder in an agency news release. “Our job is to make sure that New York’s roads are safe for everyone, and if someone chooses to be reckless and unsafe, they do not deserve to be behind the wheel, period.”
AAA of Western and Central New York supports the higher points assessments, particularly for offenses such as passing a stopped school bus.
”If you're not doing these high-risk, unsafe activities, then these changes to the point system shouldn't have a huge impact on you or your driving habits," said Valerie Puma, spokesperson for AAA of Western and Central New York. "I believe that these point increases are targeted at addressing situations where drivers are putting other people's lives at risk.”
One central New York attorney doesn't think this is the right solution.
“I don't think traffic infractions is going to be the way to make the roads more safe,” said Dennis Nave, whose Nave Law Firm in Syracuse handles many traffic infraction cases. He believes it will lead to professional drivers losing their licenses and careers from as little as one ticket and that local DAs will be less likely to offer reduced penalties to dispose of traffic cases.
He believes harsher penalties is a cash grab by the state that addresses the result of bad driving but not the causes.
“In impaired driving and probably distracted driving,” Nave said, “if we can get those things fixed, that would lead to greater safety than just trying to increase certain points on certain infractions.”
