Jonah Feldman is relieved he is legally allowed to get behind the wheel again.
The sophomore at Tufts University was on a family trip in New Jersey over the 4th of July. On the way back from getting ice cream with his girlfriend and his sister, a police officer pulled him over for speeding.
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Feldman said the officer told him he’d write him a ticket for “improper driving,” which would be a less expensive citation and have less impact on his insurance.
“He thought he was cutting me a break,” Feldman recalled.
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That’s why the Holliston driver figured he would fork over about $90 for the fine and put the ticket in the rear-view mirror. But that was far from the end of the story.
A few weeks later, a letter from the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles arrived in the mailbox, notifying Feldman that his license was suspended for 60 days.
When the RMV processed the out-of-state violation, it interpreted the careless driving civil infraction that Feldman received as something much more serious in Massachusetts: a criminal charge of reckless driving.
“I was distraught because I thought all of the money I earned over the summer would go to a lawyer to handle what I thought was a nothing ticket,” Feldman said.
Feldman hitched rides to his summer job on the Cape and paid for Ubers to get to his internship in downtown Boston. Meanwhile, he spent time calling the RMV and waiting on hold for hours in an effort to get the suspension resolved.
At one point, he even got an early-morning ride to an RMV office in Yarmouth to expedite his case.
“It was exhausting,” Feldman said. “It felt like a full-time job.”
Feldman came across a series of stories reported by the NBC10 Investigators in 2020. He saw how we helped other drivers with similar ordeals at the outset of the COVID pandemic.
At that time, a deadly crash had exposed a massive backlog of out-of-state violations at the RMV. Instead of processing the citations, the agency had instead let them pile up in boxes for years.
As a result, a slew of drivers suddenly faced suspensions for old speeding tickets and fender-benders.
“It gave me a little bit of hope that other people had gone through this and you’d been able to help them along,” Feldman said.
When we first looked at the issue, the RMV told us it does not have the statutory authority to use discretion and must treat out-of-state offenses as if they occurred in Massachusetts.
Those marching orders apparently still haven’t changed.
“There has to be a new system that Massachusetts comes up with where there’s a fundamental fairness,” said Peter Elikann, a Boston-based criminal defense attorney.
Elikann said he has clients ask if they can serve a short jail sentence instead of riding out a lengthy suspension of their driving privileges.
As we previously reported, the vast number of appeals to reckless driving suspensions are eventually overturned and removed from drivers’ records. However, by the time they argue their cases, the 60-day punishment has likely already elapsed.
NBC10 Boston Investigations
On Thursday, figures provided by the Division of Insurance revealed just how staggering the appeal statistics are for 60-day reckless driving suspensions.
Of the 557 appeals since January 2021, 347 of those were annulled—removed from the driver’s record—and another 159 were modified, meaning the RMV’s decision was changed and the driver was allowed back on the road. That is more than 90% of the appeals.
A mere 8 appeals (1%) were affirmed by the Board.
“If you get your license unfairly taken away, you can lose your job,” Elikann said. “You can’t pick up your children at daycare.”
After we flagged Feldman’s case, the Board of Appeals reversed his suspension administratively instead of making him wait for an in-person hearing.
“I feel very fortunate. It was a frustrating process and definitely a lesson learned,” Feldman said. “I really hope action gets taken and I really hope my story is a lesson that we need to do better.”
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