D.C. drivers hurt by tough interpretation of Va. offenses

Yes, Tom Selden admits, he was speeding.

Maybe he wasn’t doing the 84 mph that a Hopewell, Va., sheriff’s deputy said he was doing, but yeah, he said — he was over the 70-mph limit on Interstate 295 southeast of Richmond.

(Bill O'Leary/WASHINGTON POST) - Tom Selden stands by his car, which he is no longer allowed to drive since he lost his license.

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The December citation was the first blemish on Selden’s driving record in more than a decade — no tickets, no accidents, no points. He signed the summons, kept on driving the family down to Hilton Head, and later mailed in the $230 fine.

“I considered getting a lawyer, but it just sort of rubs me the wrong way that you can hire a lawyer and get a traffic ticket wiped off your record,” Selden said. “I really didn’t think it was going to be a problem.”

It was, in fact, going to be a problem.

In May, the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles wrote to inform Selden his driver’s license was being revoked. That speeding ticket, which included a reckless driving citation, was sufficient to pull Selden from behind the wheel for at least six months.

Selden, 54, is among a number of District residents with clean driving records who have lost their licenses in recent months after receiving relatively quotidian speeding tickets in Virginia. They have fallen into a legal Catch-22 created by the conflict between the commonwealth’s expansive definition of reckless driving and the District’s more narrow definition.

In Virginia, traveling “in excess of 80 miles per hour regardless of the applicable maximum speed limit” is reckless driving. That offense results in six points on a 24-point scale.

In the District, reckless driving involves traveling “carelessly and heedlessly in willful or wanton disregard of the rights or safety of others, or without due caution and circumspection and at a speed or in a manner so as to endanger or be likely to endanger any person or property.” The offense comes with 12 points on a 12-point scale — an automatic license revocation.

Lucinda Babers, director of the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles, said a reckless speeding citation in Virginia is an “equivalent violation” to the District’s reckless driving, even if there is no “willful or wanton disregard of the rights or safety of others.”

That interpretation has ensnared at least a dozen D.C. residents who, like Selden, were cited for driving in the low 80s on 70-mph Virginia interstates in recent months. Several of them have hired lawyers and appealed to the District DMV. None has been successful.

The D.C. Council is expected to take up legislation in September that would recalibrate the consequences for these types of offenses, assessing three or six points, depending on the severity of the reckless driving charge.

Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3), who introduced the bill, called the situation “ridiculous.” She said her staff examined laws in other jurisdictions and found the District’s reckless driving sanctions to be the most severe it found.

“It is a disproportionate response from the government and not fair to these drivers who are already paying the consequences in the ticketing state,” Cheh said.