Drivers Responsibility Program not run responsibly

car crash by zophonias.

So for several years I was driving a car with expired registration, no inspection, and no insurance. I'm not proud of this, but I thought it was interesting that the fines for these infractions added up to less than I would have paid to be driving legally all those years.

That calculation turns out to be incorrect, however, because of Texas's Driver Responsibility Program. In addition to the several hundred dollars I already paid in fines, the DRP thing means that I also owe 250 dollars a year, for the next three years.

I don't mind paying for my mistakes, but there is one key thing they forget to tell you when you pay your fines down at the municipal court: They forget to tell you anything about the DRP fines.

I had no idea that I was supposed to pay this money, and I received no correspondence about it until this week, when I got a letter from a collection agency. In fact, I suspect that this is the real reason Texas has not been able to collect these fines and has had to resort to the collection agencies. Nobody, including the clerks at the courthouse, actually knows about it!

Is anybody else familiar with these DRPs? Do they work better in other states?

UPDATE: Others share my woe.

In my particular situation, our fines were paid completely for the first year and we received no notification the second year. The deadline to pay had not expired and when I entered my information on the DPS website, it showed that I had paid my fine and owed nothing. However, when my future father in law, a 20year+ HPD sergeant, ran my license it said that it had been suspended for almost a year. Later I found out that DPS changed your identification number each year, so even if they fail to notify you, and as a good citizen you pro-actively go to the allocated website to pay a fine, the information you are given could be incorrect. Thus leaving you susceptible to being arrested and then paying hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to get out of jail for essentially driving; not because you didn’t pay for whatever violation occurred in the city you received, but because of an additional fine that the state has given you for the same exact violation in said city or jurisdiction. A fine that surprisingly, many drivers have no idea they owe. The financial and economic burden this is placing on hardworking citizens is outrageous.