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Here is from an article in Boston Globe (full link at the end)
Contrary to the common view of many motorists and many police, the state doesn't keep track of written warnings, much less take action on them. Starting in the early 1980s, state law required the Registry of Motor Vehicles to suspend a driver's license for a week after the driver received three warnings in a year, following a hearing. But the Registry never kept track of warnings, and the law was never enforced.
In 2001, as Registry officials began the massive effort of typing in tickets and warnings to monitor for racial and gender profiling, they feared they would be required to enforce the existing law, including the cumbersome requirement of hearings. The Registry asked legislators to repeal the law, and they did.
Now, when warnings are issued, they are sent to the Registry and stored, by the millions, in a warehouse in Randolph. They are not noted on drivers' records.
Officers often don't bother to check the available information on a driver's history of tickets. And not every town equips cruisers with mobile computer terminals.
Still, officers on the streets could make better decisions if they knew that a driver had a history of warnings, several chiefs said.
The state would have to make that information available when officers or a dispatcher punches up a driver's history on a computer. Some towns do record their own warnings, but the information isn't available to police in the next town.
"That would be very helpful to us," said Edward F. Davis III, the Lowell police superintendent. Even when officers have that information, they don't always write tickets to drivers who have demonstrated recklessness. On May 17, 2001, an officer in the small town of Bellingham stopped an 18-year-old white man from Franklin for driving 36 m.p.h. in a 20 m.p.h. zone. Three weeks earlier, the driver had been ticketed in North Attleborough for drag racing and driving to endanger. But the Bellingham officer wrote a warning.
A ticket might not have changed that driver's behavior. He went on to be the most-ticketed driver in the state over the next two years, with 16 tickets in all.
posted by 70.20.27...
http://www.boston.com/globe/metro/packages/tickets/072103.shtml
, Fri, 22 Jun 2007 09:23:16
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