I’ve talked a lot on this blog about the importance of safe driving. And at the Department of Transportation we are doing everything we can to protect people from drunk, distracted, and reckless drivers on our nation’s roadways.
To help keep dangerous drivers off the roads, the National Driver Register (NDR) was created in 1960 to help states communicate which drivers have had their licenses suspended or revoked or have been convicted of serious traffic violations such as driving while impaired by alcohol or drugs. As the original Register Users Guide said:
“THE PUBLIC MUST BE PROTECTED from drunken and other irresponsible drivers. This protection cannot be effective inless each State has ready access to the records of these drivers in all other States. With this information, the drivers license administrator in one State can avoid licensing a driver whose license in another State has been denied, suspended, or revoked for serious cause.”
State motor vehicle agencies provide NDR with the names of individuals who have lost their privileges or who have been convicted of a serious traffic violation. States can then search the database to make sure someone with a dangerous driving record in one state doesn’t start with a clean slate by simply jumping across state lines.
Depending on individual state regulations and the severity of the driver's violations, that driver may be denied a new license.
The NDR team poses with NHTSA Administrator David Strickland.
To honor the program's 50th anniversary, the professionals at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have significantly upgraded the Register. First, they recoded it into a programming language that isn't more than 50 years old. Then they developed features that will be much better able to meet rapidly increasing demand. Currently, the NDR contains 48 million records and fulfills more than 290,000 requests a day.
The new Problem Driver Pointer System debuted on March 28. It is powerful, scalable, and flexible enough to add capacity during peak times. This means safer roads and maybe even shorter waits at your local DMV!
The National Register helps a great deal to make transportation safer. We should also make greater use of alcohol locks that would prevent a car from even starting if the person planning to drive it is drunk. The European Union has just passed new regulations to make their roads safer and one component is to make major use of alcohol locks in all EU member countries. There is also an EU wide organization that works to reduce and eliminate distracted driving by working directly with the EU business community on how it is in businesses best interests to stop distracted driving by their employees not only in company cars but also driving to and from work in their own cars. Best wishes, Michael E. Bailey.
Posted by: Michael E. Bailey | April 10, 2011 at 06:25 PM