Safety effects of relaxing California's clean-record requirement for driver license renewal by mail

A pilot program was established in California in 1982 authorizing mail renewal of driver licenses for persons under age 70 lacking clean (accident- and conviction-free) 4-year driving records, but showing clean 2-year records at selection. Such drivers constitute about 14% of California's renewal population, or about 500,000 renewees per year. Eligible drivers whose licenses expired in 1983 were subjects of the present study. Half of them were randomly assigned to a group whose members were sent offers of renewal by mail and the other half were sent standard renewal notices requiring appearance in a field office and successful completion of vision and traffic law tests. Traffic accidents and convictions following the mailout of these documents were tracked for both groups; results presented here cover a 4-year period subsequent to mailout. During this period (a normal license term in California), no significant overall difference was shown between the groups with respect to subsequent convictions or accidents. However, significant detrimental effects on accidents were noted for a subgroup of drivers who had experienced recent traffic violations or accidents which were not on their records at selection. Implications of these results are discussed.