Latest news with #drivingprivileges
Fox News
03-07-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
New Tennessee law will suspend driver's license of teens found guilty of bullying
Teens in Tennessee can lose their sweet 16 driving privileges if found guilty of bullying other children, per a new law in the state. The law, which took effect on July 1, will allow courts to revoke driver's licenses for up to a year for teenagers caught bullying or cyberbullying other kids. The measure, sponsored by Tennessee State Rep. Lowell Russell, R., was passed with significant bipartisan support. The bill received praise from supporters as a step in the right direction to combat bullying among teens. "Bullying can cause long-term harm that results in mental health problems later in a person's life. Most acts of violence and suicides are noted as the result of being bullied. I simply got tired of nothing being done to stop bullying," Russell had told CNN in a statement. Russell also said that he hoped for this new bill to gain the attention of bullies and deter them from being "mean to others" in the future. The driving restrictions will be enforced by the court notifying the Tennessee Department of Safety to prevent a driver's license being issued to anyone found guilty of bullying in a court of law. Additionally, if they are caught driving on a suspended license, the teenagers will be at risk of additional penalties. Despite the new restrictions, the law does allow for some flexibility for first-time offenders. If revoked, teens can apply for a restricted license that allows them to still commute to essential activities such as school or work. However, the restricted license does not include driving to after-school extracurricular activities or social events. In order for teens to secure these driving privileges, they must apply for them within 10 days of the court decision and pay a $20 application fee. This new law is a continuation of the effort by Tennessee lawmakers to combat the issues of bullying and suicides among young people. The new penalties will only be applicable to bullying incidents that occur after the July 1st. "I would like to see, going forward, movement towards working with the bullies," said Scott Payne, a manager for Contact Care Line, a Knoxville-based social services organization. "Bullies aren't just born. They don't just pop up. They're products of their environment. So we need to be talking with them and finding out what's going on in their lives that's bringing about this type of behavior from them," Payne told WVLT.
Yahoo
02-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Teen bullying in Tennessee now comes with a new penalty: losing driving privileges
Tennessee lawmakers have passed a new law aimed at stopping bullying in schools by hitting teens where it hurts - their ability to drive. Starting July 1, 2025, any minor found guilty of bullying or cyberbullying in juvenile court will lose their driving privileges for one year. The bipartisan measure passed with strong support, gaining 85 votes in the House and 26 in the Senate. "Taking away driving privileges will hopefully get the attention of bullies and deter them from being mean to others," said Tennessee State Rep. Lowell Russell, who sponsored the bill. David G. Ridings, a Nashville criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor who serves as a part-time night court judge, praised the new measure. "I love the premise behind this new law. There is no place for bullying in our society today," Ridings said. "When you engage in bullying and/or cyber-bullying, you should absolutely lose that privilege. Good job Tennessee! More states should follow the example." Russell noted that "being a victim of bullying can cause long-term harm that results in mental health problems later in a person's life." The law does offer a second chance for first-time offenders. Teens can apply for a restricted license that allows them to drive to essential activities like school, work and church services. However, the restricted license won't allow driving to social events or after-school activities. MORE: Woman killed when tree falls on car in Delaware as East Coast storms intensify The process for getting a restricted license requires several steps. Teens must apply within 10 days of the court's decision and pay a $20 application fee. They also need to meet age requirements and pass all driving tests. Finally, they must get approval from a judge, who will specify exactly when and where they can drive. The measure builds on Tennessee's efforts from last year to combat bullying, when legislators created clearer legal definitions of bullying and cyberbullying to help prevent violence and suicide among young people. The new driving penalties will apply to bullying incidents that happen after the law takes effect in July 2025.
Associated Press
25-06-2025
- Associated Press
They were convicted of killing with their cars. No one told the California DMV
California courts have failed to report hundreds of vehicular manslaughter convictions to the state's Department of Motor Vehicles over the past five years, allowing roadway killers to improperly keep their driver's licenses, a CalMatters investigation has found. Marvin Salazar was convicted in May 2023 for killing his 18-year-old friend Joseph Ramirez, who was in the passenger seat when Salazar gunned his car, lost control and slammed into a tree, court records show. Under California law, the state should have taken away Salazar's driving privileges for at least three years. But the Los Angeles County Superior Court didn't report the conviction to the DMV. Two months later, the agency issued Salazar his most recent license. Since then, he's gotten two speeding tickets and has been in another collision, records show. 'How can he keep driving?' said Gaudy Lemus, Ramirez's mother. 'We wanted consequences for him. Remove his driver's license.' LA court officials belatedly reported the manslaughter conviction to the DMV last month, after CalMatters discovered the failure and asked about the case. It was only then that the state sent Salazar a notice revoking his driving privileges, records show. CalMatters uncovered the error and others like it by cross-checking convictions in vehicular manslaughter cases against motorists' DMV records, as part of an ongoing investigation. Earlier this year, we reported that the agency routinely allows drivers with horrifying histories of dangerous driving — including fatal crashes, DUIs and numerous tickets — to continue to operate on our roadways. But this isn't just a DMV issue. Reporters identified about 400 cases from 2019 to 2024 in which the drivers' convictions weren't listed on their driving records, largely because the courts failed to report that information. The review wasn't comprehensive; records were unavailable or incomplete in a number of counties. In Los Angeles, about one-third of all convictions in manslaughter cases we identified were missing from drivers' records. In Santa Clara County, it was half. We found no missing convictions in Orange County. In response to our questions, 32 county courts so far have reported more than 275 missing convictions to the DMV. As a result, nearly 200 drivers who've killed have had their driving privileges suspended or revoked, updated DMV reports for these drivers show. While some already had a separate license suspension, 70 appear to have had a valid license before the agency took action in response to our reporting. County courts, law enforcement and the DMV have a long history of poor communication that dates to the days of paper records. Today, court administrators blame the breakdowns on a mix of human error and technological bugs. Chris Orrock, a spokesperson for the DMV, said the agency sends out revocation and suspension notices 'as soon as we're notified.' Even without a conviction, the DMV does have the discretion to strip a driver of their license for a fatal crash. We reported earlier this year that the agency often doesn't use that power. But in many cases, there is no discretion. State law, for example, requires the agency to revoke a driver's license for at least three years after a felony vehicular manslaughter conviction. As a result of the delayed reporting by the courts, some drivers could end up losing their licenses for far less than three years. That's because the DMV typically enforces the sanction from the date of the conviction, not the date the court communicates it to the agency. Salazar's current driving record shows him eligible to reapply for a license next spring — three years after his conviction but just a year after records show the state took action to revoke his driving privileges. His attorney declined to comment on his driving record but said Salazar did everything the court required. For Lemus, the months after her son died in Salazar's car were a blur. The loss was haunting, coming just as the teenager had decided to pursue a career building tiny homes for the homeless. She started having such bad panic attacks that she moved to a new city and switched jobs, unable to bear the drive to work through the intersection where the crash occurred. Her 25-year-old daughter still refuses to drive at all. Lemus said she didn't initially want Salazar to go to prison, 'because it was an accident.' Now, she wonders whether that was a mistake. 'I don't want another family to go through whatever we went through,' Lemus said. A series of errors leads to reporting failures State law has long required courts to report vehicle-related convictions to the DMV, including for speeding, DUI and vehicular manslaughter. The agency then puts the violations on a motorist's driving record and, if necessary, suspends their license. Last month, CalMatters reporters sent hundreds of names and case numbers to dozens of courts throughout the state and asked why convictions from vehicular manslaughter cases didn't appear on drivers' records. Most courts responded to questions quickly, thanked us for telling them, acknowledged the mistake and indicated that they would report the convictions to the DMV. 'They were errors on our part. I'm not going to sugarcoat it,' said Tara Leal, the court executive officer in Kern County, where we found 22 missing convictions. In many counties, court staff simply neglected to send the information to the DMV. Court clerks typically enter convictions into a case management system. Many courts use a system that has a tab for them to click on to transmit the information to the DMV. Vehicle code violations like speeding tickets and DUIs clearly need to go to the DMV, court officials said. But most penal code violations, including offenses like robbery and assault, do not. Vehicular manslaughter is a penal code violation. Heather Pugh, the Yuba County Superior Court executive officer, confirmed that her court should have reported conviction information to the DMV for eight cases CalMatters flagged. 'To address that, we will reach out to the DMV to provide training to our staff on reporting requirements,' she said. 'Additionally, we have instituted manual reviews of reportable non-vehicle code convictions to ensure they have been properly reported.' Similarly, Fresno County's director of court operations, Vidal Fernandez, acknowledged 'the element of human error' in his court not reporting a half-dozen convictions in recent years. After realizing the problem, he said, staff checked further back, to 2015, identified an additional 17 cases and sent those convictions to the DMV as well. Other counties have their computers essentially programmed to send conviction information to the DMV when clerks update the disposition information on a case, in theory taking human error out of the equation. But in response to questions from CalMatters, some administrators discovered that the programs were missing certain codes and had failed to function as intended. 'Ultimately it's our responsibility,' said Jake Chatters, the court executive officer in Placer County, where a coding issue kept the court's system from reporting two manslaughter cases. In other courts, convictions were apparently reported, but there was some mistake in the information sent — like an incorrect birth date or a missing digit in a license number — and the DMV kicked the report back with an error message. Administrators said clerks are supposed to fix any errors and resubmit the information to the DMV, but in some cases that didn't happen. The result of the patchwork process is that even convictions from some of the most high-profile traffic deaths in recent years were missing from drivers' records. A deadly street race that grabbed international attention Ricardo Aguilar was racing his Dodge Challenger Hellcat in South Los Angeles one December afternoon in 2021, according to the Los Angeles Times, when he struck and killed a pedestrian — Arian Rahbar, a 21-year-old USC student and aspiring medical researcher. Rahbar's father, Sam, summarized the void left by his only child. 'Without Arian, life as we know it has ceased to exist,' he told a judge. The story made global headlines amid a spike in traffic deaths in Los Angeles and other California cities. Aguilar was convicted of felony vehicular manslaughter in 2023, court records show. But until a few weeks ago, that was never reflected in his state driving record. In the section of his DMV report where collisions and traffic violations are supposed to show up, there was instead this message: 'NONE TO REPORT.' His driver's license was still listed as valid. It was only in May, after CalMatters asked the LA court for an explanation, that officials reported his and more than 100 other convictions to the DMV as required. Aguilar's license is now listed as revoked. Aguilar's attorney did not respond to requests for comment. Rahbar's friend and former high school tennis teammate Ashwin Yedavalli was saddened and frustrated all over again to learn about the court error that allowed Rahbar's killer to keep his license. Yedavalli, now 25, lives in Long Beach and still stops by the crash scene when he's nearby. He helped organize a tennis tournament in his friend's memory, and he said it's unfair that the legal system failed to deliver on fundamental consequences for his death. 'It's basically been brushed off,' Yedavalli said. 'What about Arian's life and legacy?' A decades-long failure to communicate This is not a new problem. In the early 1990s, the California DMV was so concerned about getting timely and accurate reports from courts and law enforcement that it produced an educational video called 'The Traffic Citation Trail.' Frank Zolin, the agency's director at the time, sat behind a desk wearing a crisp suit and chunky glasses, his silver hair swept to the side, to deliver the film's key message: 'We cannot achieve traffic safety without effective teamwork between local law enforcement, the courts and DMV.' The film goes on to tell the fictionalized story of a reckless young driver who is able to avoid a license suspension because a ticket wasn't reported to the DMV. In an early scene, the young man rushes to the mailbox to intercept a letter from the agency before his parents can see it. 'They told me four tickets means bye-bye license. There's only three tickets here,' the driver says in surprise as he reads a warning letter from the state. 'The one I got more than a month ago isn't even here. … It's party time tonight.' In a tragic, real-life twist, the actor who played the motorist was killed by a drunken driver more than a decade later. And communication continued to be an issue. Robert Bullock worked at the DMV for more than three decades. In that time, he said, drivers would sometimes come in wanting to know whether they could renew their license, despite a conviction. 'We'd pull up the record and it wasn't there,' said Bullock, who retired in 2019. He said he would tell them, 'The court has screwed up, and you kind of got a freebie.' Technology has, of course, improved from the era of grainy '90s videos. Back then, police drove boxy sedans and held walkie-talkies the size of bricks. DMV clerks picked through mounds of paper forms, copying information into clunky gray computers with white text on black screens. Today, at courthouses equipped with online records and modern digital tools, some administrators said they're upgrading to a new case management system that should ensure conviction reporting is automated. Others said they're going to do more training and manual checks to make sure the information is sent to the DMV. In Los Angeles — one of the nation's biggest county court systems, where we sent a list of 150 convictions that appeared to be missing from driver records — administrators declined an interview request. Instead, they emailed a statement from Rob Oftring, the court's chief communications and external affairs officer: 'The Court continues to work expeditiously to identify ways to ensure the successful electronic transmittal of all abstract of judgments to the DMV from its case management systems. This includes additional manual checks to identify in advance technical issues that prevent an abstract from being sent to the DMV. This also includes ensuring all criminal courthouse locations timely process their queues for transmittal and additional mandatory training for court staff.' A trail of disappointment For someone like Angie Brey, who's had to confront a system that often treats deadly crashes as accidents rather than crimes, the promises of change sound hollow. She lost her partner and the father of her son, Gregory Turnage, on Mother's Day in 2021. That's when wealth manager Timothy Hamano drove onto a sidewalk and hit the 41-year-old Turnage, according to records prosecutors filed in court. Hamano had been drinking beer on the golf course and a bloody mary at lunch in San Francisco before the crash, his wife later told police. Hamano pleaded no contest to felony vehicular manslaughter and hit-and-run early last year. He received virtually no time behind bars after getting credit for wearing an ankle monitor at home while the case was open. The conviction should have prompted the state to revoke Hamano's license, but the Alameda County court didn't report it. 'They essentially let him get away with murder, in our minds,' Brey said.'The fact that they didn't even take away his license … is just mind-blowing.' A spokesperson, Paul Rosynsky, said the Alameda court reports hundreds of criminal convictions to the DMV every month, but he acknowledged that staff had missed sending two for manslaughter in recent years, including the Hamano case. Hamano's license appears to have been valid as recently as May 7, when DMV records show he got in another collision. (The records don't detail who was at fault or the severity.) The agency sent Hamano a notice on May 28 that his driving privileges were revoked, following CalMatters' inquiries. Hamano's attorney, Colin Cooper, said his client 'is traumatized by what he did' and will never forgive himself. Hamano didn't drive while the case was open and drove afterward only because he had a valid license and insurance, Cooper said. Hamano stopped driving after getting the revocation letter from the DMV, he said. Brey said holding drivers accountable for death is the least the state can do. She said she worries every day, when their son has to cross a busy intersection to get to school, that history will repeat itself. 'If somebody can come up on the sidewalk and kill my partner,' she said, 'it just makes me really scared for my son.' ___ Court research by Robert Lewis, Lauren Hepler, Anat Rubin, Sergio Olmos, Cayla Mihalovich, Ese Olumhense, Ko Bragg, Andrew Donohue and Jenna Peterson. ___ This story was originally published by CalMatters and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
