Inside This Issue...

On July 23, U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters announced that the number of people who died on the nation’s roads fell last year, leading to the lowest highway fatality rate ever recorded and the largest drop in total deaths in 15 years. In 2006, 42,642 people died in traffic crashes, a drop of 868 deaths compared to 2005. This two percent decline in traffic deaths contributed to the historic low fatality rate of 1.42 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled (VMT), Secretary Peters said. Most significantly, fatalities of occupants of passenger vehicles continued a steady decline to 30,521, the lowest annual total since 1993, Secretary Peters said. Injuries were also down in 2006, with passenger car injuries declining by 6.2 percent and large truck injuries falling by 15 percent, she said. Secretary Peters cautioned that troubling trends continue in motorcycle and alcohol-related crashes. Alcohol-related fatalities rose slightly in 2006 over the previous year, while motorcycle deaths rose by 5.1 percent. This is the ninth year in a row the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has seen an increase in motorcycle deaths. The full report is available on NHTSA's Web site.

A new poll by the Traffic Injury Research Foundation (TIRF) shows that nearly 1.3 million Ontarians fell asleep or nodded off while driving at least once in the past year. Of these drivers, more than 100,000 did so on five or more occasions. The number of Ontario drivers involved in a fatigued or drowsy driving collision may be as high as 167,000. Over a half-million fatigued and drowsy driving trips occurred in which the driver had to brake or steer to avoid a collision. View TIRF's press release for more details and access to a fact sheet, a copy of the poll's questionnaire, and a copy of the report.

On July 16, the House of Representatives unanimously passed House Concurrent Resolution 87 (H. Con. Res. 87), supporting the goals and ideals of a world day of remembrance for road crash victims and their families. The resolution designates the third Sunday of November as a World Remembrance Day for Road Crash Victims and their Families.

On July 18, the House Ways and Means Committee voted 41-0 to approve the Social Security Number Privacy and Identity Theft Prevention Act of 2007 (HR 3046). HR 3046 is designed to increase the privacy of Social Security information and curb identity theft by preventing federal, state and local governments from displaying Social Security Numbers to the public, showing the numbers on identification tags and cards and, in most cases, selling the numbers.

Legislation that would implement recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission hit another road-block on July 16 as it headed for a House-Senate conference. Senate Republicans objected to a procedural move that sought to allow the House to combine rail security legislation with its version of the Sept. 11 bill (HR 1). On Tuesday, July 17, the House appointed a conferee for consideration of Title II of the House bill, and Title III and subtitle C of title XIV of the Senate amendment. The Senate has already appointed conferees Biden and Lugar from the Committee on Foreign Relations. The Senate’s version of the Sept. 11 legislation (S 4), passed March 13, contained a rail security section. The House wanted to add its rail security bill to its Sept. 11 bill in order to have a fully comparable measure for the conference with the Senate.  Both HR 1 and S 4 include provisions for an enhanced driver's license in Sec. 504 amending the Intelligence Reform Act.

On July 12, the Senate Appropriations Committee cleared FY 2008 Transportation-HUD appropriations legislation allocating $104.6 billion for the Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration and for Housing and Urban Development (HUD). On July 23, the White House threatened a veto of the bill denouncing its “irresponsible and excessive” spending level. (The spending bill is $4.1 billion more than Bush requested and $5.9 billion more than enacted in fiscal 2007.) For general information about the bill provisions, view the Senate Appropriations Committee press release.

A federal appeals court in San Francisco has ruled that a police officer's check of a license plate is not a search that would require a search warrant under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that "people do not have a subjective expectation of privacy in their license plates." The court issued its ruling in the Oregon case of Ismael Diaz-Castaneda, an undocumented immigrant who was a passenger in a pickup truck stopped on a highway by a deputy sheriff in 2004. After the deputy found from a license plate check that the truck owner's driver's license was suspended, the deputy checked Diaz-Castaneda's identification as well. Diaz-Castaneda was eventually indicted and convicted on charges of illegal re-entry into the United States after committing an aggravated felony and was sentenced to seven years in prison. He claimed in his appeal that the license plate check that set off the investigation was an illegal search in violation of the Constitution. But Circuit Judge Raymond Fisher wrote that license plates are in plain view and "are specifically intended to convey information about a vehicle to law enforcement authorities, among others."

According to CQ, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently submitted a report to Congress stating that it is expected to offer $30 million in competitive grants to states this fall to implement Real ID Act-compliant driver’s licenses.  Congress appropriated $40 million in October 2005 for states to implement the Real ID Act. $34 million of the appropriated $40 million was withheld until DHS submitted a report to the Senate and House Appropriations committees on implementing the Real ID Act.  That report was submitted to Congress last week and is awaiting committee approval. Unless the report takes long to approve, DHS estimates that grant guidelines and application kits will be posted at www.grants.gov by the end of July 2007. Grant applications will be accepted Aug. 3 through Sept. 17 and grants awarded in October and November.

On July 15, AAMVA successfully executed the annual Disaster Recovery (DR) Drill for the National Motor Vehicle Title Information System (NMVTIS). The NMVTIS application and database were recreated at the backup recovery site, and during the drill, connectivity to AAMVA’s Network Control Software (NCS) was established, tested, and verified. With the assistance of the states of Virginia and Nevada, application messages were sent to and from the NMVTIS Central File while processing on the backup host. The results of the exchange were successfully validated. We would especially like to thank Virginia and Nevada for their assistance in this year’s drill, as well as the AAMVA NMVTIS community for its support during this important event. The NMVTIS drill marks the completion of three critical disaster recovery drills. In April, the AAMVA team successfully executed a recovery drill for the Network Control Software (NCS) followed by a successful May drill of the Commercial Driver License Information System (CDLIS).

As part of its implementation of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA), the Social Security Administration (SSA) is adding a new Verification Response Code to its Social Security Online Verification (SSOLV) Social Security Number (SSN) verification program. AAMVA has updated the Social Security Verification (SSV) System Specification to Release 2.1.0, July 2007, to support this new SSN Verification Response Code, and to provide more explicit clarification of the SSA requirement for driver names in SSN verification inquiries to contain only upper-case letters. AAMVA will make an initial distribution of the updated specification to its current SSOLV mailing lists. For copies of the updated specification, contact AAMVA’s Operations Department (opsdept@aamva.org, 888-AAMVA80, Option 3).

NHTSA funding currently available to support the nationwide deployment of the Digital Image Access & Exchange (DIA&E) Program is due to expire at the end of November 2008. The goal of AAMVA’s DIA&E team is to qualify and distribute funding to as many jurisdictions as possible before that expiration date. Please take advantage of this financial assistance to implement the image exchange program in your jurisdiction and be part of the nationwide initiative. As much as $40,000 is available to each U.S. jurisdiction upon successful implementation of the program. To qualify, your work must be completed by November 2008. For any questions, comments and/or concerns regarding funding requirements, implementation details, and program benefits, contact Nancy Carlson (703) 908-2818 or Paul Blanchard (703) 908-5780. The DIA&E team is excited to bring this functionality to the table and is looking forward to working with all the jurisdictions to maximize the program benefits.

AAMVA is actively seeking a qualified individual to fill the Director of Driver Fitness position within the Programs Division. This position is responsible for the development, coordination, monitoring and disseminating of information in the following areas: Younger Driver, Older Driver, Driver Fitness, Driver Improvement, Graduated Driver's License, and Financial Responsibility and Insurance. Additional responsibilities include serving as staff liaison to committees, subcommittees and working groups in these areas as well as serving as the staff liaison to the Financial Responsibility and Insurance (FR&I) discipline. A job description and submission guidelines are available on AAMVA's Web site. More details are also available in the job advertisement.