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Chris Lisinski | SHNS
Massachusetts motorists racked up driving violations at an accelerating rate through the first seven months of 2024, according to data state regulators presented Tuesday.
The head of the Merit Rating Board, a division of the state Registry of Motor Vehicles, unveiled figures at a board meeting counting nearly 697,000 total violations issued to drivers between January and July.
Monthly violations varied between a low of 86,785 and a high of 110,744, but the average of about 99,500 violations per month appears to be on an upward trajectory. Law enforcement issued close to 1.08 million violations in all of 2023, a pace of roughly 90,000 per month.
As was the case last year, most of the violations recorded so far in 2024 -- about 446,000, or 64 percent -- were warnings rather than civil or criminal citations.
Motorists incurred more than 37,000 violations through the first seven months of the year for using cellphones or other devices behind the wheel, running afoul of a 2019 law designed to crack down on distracted driving. Most of those, too, were warnings.
Distracted driving violations spiked in April -- 2,241 civil citations, 252 criminal citations and 9,586 warnings -- which Merit Rating Board Director Sonja Singleton said is when the state observes "Hands-Free Awareness Month" with additional enforcement.
"You'll notice this large spike in warnings, which brings the total very much higher," she told board members. "We see this year over year as it relates to distracted driving."
The most common violations were speeding, failure to stop or yield, and inspection sticker issues, mirroring last year's rankings. Among junior operator violations, which represent about 2 percent of all citations, the top three issues are speeding, failure to stop or yield, and marked lanes violations, Singleton said.
Law enforcement officials in Massachusetts have been moving to embrace electronic citation capabilities rather than relying on paper citations, which outnumbered their electronic counterparts as recently as 2020.
Singleton said Tuesday that 305 of 351 municipal police departments in Massachusetts are using e-citation systems, as is the Massachusetts State Police. More than a dozen other local departments are on the cusp of installing similar technology, she said.
The Merit Rating Board is also conducting validation testing on a "citation portal," which Singleton said should be completed by the end of the year.
"We're very, very happy with this rollout. It's been a long time coming, and we're very, very pleased with where we are at this point," she said.
