Abstract
Assembly Bill (AB) 60 (Stats. 2013, Ch. 524) – the Safe and Responsible Drivers Act – came into effect in January 2015, authorizing the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to issue an original driver license to persons with undocumented legal status in the United States (i.e., undocumented immigrants).1 Before AB 60, the DMV had estimated that 12 percent of all motorists in California were without a valid driver's license2, and during this same period, undocumented immigrants made up between six and seven percent of the state’s total population.3 AB 60 identified unlicensed driving as a major safety problem in California and a significant contributor to the percent of uninsured motorists in the state.4 Given the potential impacts of AB 60 to lower both the percentage of unlicensed and uninsured motorists, the California Department of Insurance (CDI) is interested in better understanding how the passage of AB 60 may have affected a number of key outcomes, including the number of driver licenses issued, the number of applicants to CDI’s California Low-Cost Auto (CLCA) insurance program, the percentage of uninsured motorists, including those involved in collisions and hit‐and‐run incidents. At the time of this study, AB 60 data was available only at the statewide level5; the following analyses use population statistics related to the 58 counties in California as a proxy for more granular data related to AB 60 motorists.