Frustrated, confused and angry are the feelings that dozens of Massachusetts drivers are reporting to 7 Investigates.
Driver after driver received a letter from the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles (RMV) that warned of a potential suspension of their driver’s license.
“I couldn’t possibly know what it was because I have a clean record. I had nothing to be concerned about,” North Andover resident Craig McQuate said.
In McQuate’s letter, the offense was listed as ‘complaint regulatory.’
“I’m just trying to find out what is the issue because the letter said you could upload supporting documentation. For what? I don’t even know what the issue is,” McQuate lamented.
Similar vague descriptions flooded the mailboxes of other 7 News viewers. The letters sent drivers on a weeks and sometimes months long quest to track down and solve the problem.
Drivers had to wait weeks for an appointment with the RMV where they found out the reason their license was getting suspended.
For McQuate, he was told the issue stemmed from an unpaid speeding ticket from 1989.
After the meeting with the RMV, McQuate said he was given hours to try to settle the matter with the court.
“I called Woburn District Court and the woman there who was extremely helpful said I can search for it but you have to understand our records from 1989 were on index cards and books so it’s going to take me a while, I’ll have to go down to the vault,” McQuate remembered.
The court was unable to find his paperwork and settle the matter before RMV’s deadline so McQuate’s license was suspended.
“The fact is it is just plain wrong. They shouldn’t be able to do that. This is a speeding ticket that is 35 years old and you can’t give me 30 days to resolve this. It has to be resolved at the hearing that day?!” he expressed with frustration.
McQuate said he had no memory of getting the ticket initially or failing to pay it. After tracking down the ticket with the court he learned a potential reason why the ticket went unpaid.
“I find that my name is not only misspelled but the address is incorrect,” McQuate reported. “That’s the thing that really gets me is I would not have ignored something like this.”
Instead of dragging the process out and choosing to appeal the violation, McQuate said he just paid $225 for the ticket and to reinstate his license.
He was faced with quickly losing his license so he said he didn’t have time to fight the issue and resigned to pay the $225 to RMV to fix the problem.
“Realistically if I had time, I would have argued that ticket. OK, a speeding ticket from 1989? Tell me where you clocked me,” McQuate said.
A similar frustration was expressed over in Watertown by Garo Yavshaoglu who went months without his license.
“It’s disgusting. You couldn’t go to the hospital, you couldn’t go to your doctor’s appointment, you couldn’t go shopping because you’re paralyzed. I know I used the bicycle but you know, you cannot do things with a bicycle,” Yavshaoglu expressed.
He also found out his issue was caused by an unresolved ticket from 1987 for failing to stop at a stop sign. It took him months of going back and forth between the courts and the RMV before he was able to get back behind the wheel.
While McQuate and Yavshaoglu both had the time and finances to resolve their issues, the are concerned about the drivers who aren’t as fortunate.
7 Investigates has heard from drivers who have lost their jobs and are in jeopardy of missing medical appointments and losing their driving-centered jobs because of suspended drivers and CDL licenses. Many are facing tickets from decades ago and others are forced to resolve tickets from states they have never been in.
Data obtained from the RMV showed more than 700 drivers’ licenses were suspended in 2023 due to ‘complaint regulatory’ issues. Since 2020, more than 3,500 drivers have been impacted.
“My blood pressure rises every time I talk about it because it was such a frustrating experience because your hands are tied. There is absolutely nothing you can do,” McQuate said.
For months, 7 Investigates questioned RMV on why these decades old charges were emerging now.
The state agency said Massachusetts was either not aware of violations that happened in another state or that the drivers had another account in the state with an outstanding suspension.
The RMV has been called out in the past for failing to review past violations. The issue first came to light five years ago after a fatal crash in New Hampshire. A truck driver who was involved in a fatal crash with seven motorcyclists should have had his MA driver’s license suspended at the time due to a previous violation out of state, however Massachusetts failed to flag it.
Since the 2019 crash, the RMV has been cross checking millions of drivers’ records with a national database. The state is also a part of a driver history record program (DHR) that merges drivers records across states. Each year other states opt into the database which leads to more unresolved issues getting discovered.
While the effort is done to keep roads safe and records up to date, drivers like McQuate can’t help but question if there is a better way.
“The system is without question broken. They obviously had a knee jerk reaction, I know that they started merging these records when that big accident happened up in New Hampshire. I get that but a knee jerk reaction is they went through this without thinking of the unintended consequences and I think this is an example of that,” McQuate said.
RMV told 7 Investigates the letters give drivers the legally required notice and the opportunity for a hearing. The agency declined commenting on specific cases.
Tracking down and resolving the issue is left up to the common driver; as is the financial burden. That is something legal advocates and some lawmakers are seeking to change.
“One of the biggest challenges that low income drivers face is the compounding nature of these RMV penalties,” said Mike Ryan, head of legislative policy at the Committee for Public Counsel Services. “If you have the money to pay this fine right away, it’s not that big of a deal. If you are not able to pay right away, within 20 days you are hit with a late fee. Twenty days after that your license is suspended then you are stuck with a reinstatement fee.”
For drivers who rely on a license, a suspension may leave them no option but to drive without one and face additional fines and violations.
Ryan explained suspended licenses and driving without a license are the two biggest charges in district courts.
“That is a huge allocation of court resources for things that really have nothing to do with road safety. If we were able to cut out a chunk of those by stop suspending people’s licenses for failure to pay, we would be able to reallocate these resources to the more serious offenses in Massachusetts,” Ryan said.
He is working with some state lawmakers to pass a bill that would allow drivers to apply for a hardship waive to reduce administrative fees owed to the RMV.
“Failure to pay really has nothing to do with road safety. If someone has an out of state conviction for drinking and driving or being habitual traffic offenders, those should be settled on a case to case basis, but if it’s something where someone just hasn’t paid a fine there should be a way to forgive these fines,” Ryan said.
The RMV collected $21 million dollars from license reinstatement fees in 2023. Since 2020, drivers have paid more than $83 million to reinstate their licenses for various reasons. This money goes into the Commonwealth Transportation Fund that aids in improving transportation across the state.
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