Unlicensed To Kill

By MARGUERITE MICHAELS

Jerome Brown had been driving without a license for two years, police say, before fate caught up with him. On May 28 he lost control of his girlfriend's 1989 station wagon while driving on a curvy road in Salisbury, Maryland. The skidding car hit a mailbox and a telephone pole before wrapping itself around a tree. Brown's girlfriend was killed instantly. His 14-year-old daughter died a few minutes later. Brown, 41, who was seriously injured, was allegedly driving drunk. He shouldn't have been on the road in any condition -- his license had been suspended in 1992 after a long string of traffic violations.

A week earlier in New York City, Jesus Soto and his son were installing an antenna on a pickup truck parked along a boulevard when a Chevy Caprice Classic slammed into them. Soto, 51, died instantly. His son, 15, was critically injured. The driver, Angel Burgos, 33, had no valid license and was allegedly driving drunk. His license had been suspended 11 times.

For the most part, driving has become safer in recent years. The number of fatal crashes in the U.S. declined from 42,000 in 1988 to 35,000 in 1992, thanks to such measures as mandatory seat-belt use, an increase in the drinking age and a decrease in speed limits to 55 m.p.h. on many highways. But within that success story is a notable exception: unlicensed drivers. Hard to identify and hard to control, they have become a notorious, hard-core class of scofflaws who often stay on the streets until they cause someone harm. While many drunk drivers are now punished with fines and jail time, the most common punishment for driving with a suspended license is to suspend the license again -- often with little effect.

The portion of accidents each year involving unlicensed drivers is estimated to be a relatively small 3%, but that nonetheless amounts to thousands of deaths and injuries each year across the U.S. And these are only the people who end up in accidents. "The numbers are misleading," says Jerry Tannahill, an analyst for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. "We have no way of knowing how many people are on the roads operating cars who really shouldn't be."

There are plenty of clues that signal the potential for tragedy. In the past two years, 6,484 people in New York City have had their license suspended for the 20th time or more. Almost 6% of Michigan's 6.5 million drivers lost their privileges last year; an estimated two-thirds of them keep driving anyway. More than 36,000 Texas drivers involved in accidents last year had no license. In Southern California, which leads the U.S. in hit-and-run cases, police believe many of the people who flee the scene do so because they are driving without a license. State authorities estimate the number of illegal drivers to be as high as 1.7 million, or more than 8% of California's drivers.

Efforts to get these motorists off the road typically run into the classic struggle of individual rights vs. public safety. Proposals that would require motorists to display a valid license on their windshield have languished for two decades because of concerns for privacy. "The courts say mobility is a right. They have frowned upon any type of surveillance program to catch these people," says Jack Grant, a project manager for the International Association of Chiefs of Police. While traffic codes in most states permit police to make random stops to check for a valid operator's license, the majority of law- enforcement agencies have been too busy to make it a priority.

Legislators across the country are trying to give the courts -- and the police -- a bit more to work with. In Ohio the state has developed a computer system that prevents drivers with suspended operator's licenses from renewing the license plates for their vehicle. Police in Santa Rosa, California, have arrested 660 people since last November for driving without a license and have impounded their cars. Last week the California assembly passed a bill that would essentially adopt the Santa Rosa program on a statewide basis.

Oregon and Washington decided to confront the privacy issue head-on. Cars registered to drivers who have previously had their licenses suspended or revoked must carry a special designation: either a colored license plate or sticker. This type of marking allows police to pull a driver over at any time to check the status of the license. New York has turned to harsher punishment: a rash of accidents inspired the state legislature to pass a law with escalating penalties for repeat offenders, including fines, criminal charges and as much as 30 days of jail time. A second bill, introduced recently, would increase criminal penalties for vehicular manslaughter and leaving the scene of an accident.

Not everyone, however, thinks that society can afford to deter unlicensed drivers by threatening them with jail. "It would be prohibitively expensive to incarcerate people on that level, and there is a legitimate question of whether it is the appropriate punishment to fit the crime," says Dave DeYoung, a research analyst at the California department of motor vehicles. While 60% to 70% of suspended California motorists ignore the sanctions, many of them take pains to avoid being caught and fined again. "They tend to drive less often and more carefully," says DeYoung. "The letter of the law is being violated, but the goal of increasing traffic safety is being met." Even so, the most desirable effect would be for unlicensed drivers to be so wary of detection that they actually fear leaving the driveway.

With reporting by Victoria Balfour/New York, Kristen Lippert-Martin/ Washingto n and Sylvester Monroe/Los Angeles