Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles suspends seven hundred more drivers licenses

In a memo released on Friday, state officials said that since the review began, the “number of actions taken totals 2,039 suspensions issued pertaining to 1,607 unique drivers.”

Tragic New Hampshire accident which triggered the latest Registry scandal
A Miranda Thompson/AP image

– News from elsewhere covered by Quincy Quarry News with commentary added

The Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles suspends seven hundred more drivers licenses amid an ongoing internal review overseen by outside officials.

In time-honored fashion, the Registry of Motor Vehicles again made this latest breaking badly bad news© announcement on a Friday so as to take advantage of a usually quiet summer weekend news cycle to announce that it has roughly doubled the number of license suspensions it noted per its July 5 review status report ten days ago.

The Boston broadsheet did not, however, post an over and under for how many more licenses might be suspended this week. 

Talk to the Secretary of Transportation …
An Angela Rowlings/Boston Herald image

Apparently, the broadsheet accepted the Registry’s claim that it has taken care of all of the backlog of long stored away and all but forgotten paperwork.

On the other hand, new problems came to light.  The local National Public Radio station reported that the Registry’s Merit Ratings Board has for years not duly reported out its drivers license suspensions to other states as it should have done per various intrastate and federal compacts.

Then again, given that the Registry was remiss in suspending so many licenses, it is unclear what – if anything – it had to report out to other states as regards how many Massachusetts drivers licenses it had actually suspended before this latest Registry scandal hit the fan.

Talk to the Secretary of Transportation …
A file photo

Additionally, there is no word about the fate of the head of the Quincy-based Registry office who has apparently Q-ed up, Big Time, misrunning it or that of his assistant who is surely but coincidentally related to Quincy Mayor Thomas P. Koch.

The NPR station also reported that the Registry has also been remiss at reporting out adverse information on the driving records of all 5.2 million Massachusetts license-holders with the National Driver Registry, a digital database that tracks violations nationally. 

As such, there is the possibility that undertaking this effort may uncover other traffic incidents that may have been overlooked.  No updates were available on the progress of that effort Friday, but Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack last week called it an “unprecedented” project.

Working hard after hardly working …
An old file photo

At the same time, Quincy Quarry cannot help but suspect that this unprecedented data updating project will be Q’ed up somehow or other and thus errant data will so be uploaded onto the National Driver Registry database. 

For example, errantly duplicated entries of traffic citations.

Source: RMV suspends hundreds more Massachusetts drivers. licenses amid internal review

QQ disclaimer