It’s DW-cam time.

The state Department of Motor Vehicles will eventually add points to your driver’s license after a conviction for driving while intoxicated or aggravated operating without a license — both of which will receive 11 points under new guidelines that went in quietly at the beginning of this month.

Officials also increased the number of points drivers will earn for other convictions: eight points for passing a stopped school bus (up from five), five points for leaving the scene of an accident causing injury (up from three), and five points for failure. to exercise due care (from two). A penalty for drag racing, which previously netted no points, will now land a driver with five.

The DMV’s official threshold for recommending that a judge suspend a driver’s license is exactly 11 points. The new rules also extend the time frame in which the judge must take into account accumulated points from 18 months to 24 months.

Under the new rules, the DMV now requires drivers with 11 or more points in a 24-month period, or nine or more speeding-related points in a 24-month period, to attend a hearing where the agency can suspend their license – a new form of accountability for reckless drivers. Drivers who obtain four more points within a year of one of these hearings will be required to attend another.

“It’s definitely going to result in more suspensions, more revocations, more driver assessment fees,” said Steven Stites, an attorney who represents drivers in moving violation cases.

Stites called the points “an existential threat to the lives and livelihoods” of the people they represent, who are often professional drivers.

“Anything that makes the points system harder on them is something that will affect their behavior, which … will result in more of them being suspended, losing their licenses and, I would theorize, causing more of them to drive more. also carefully,” he said.

DMV officials did not return a request for comment on the rules, which were published in the State Register but not, oddly, on the agency’s own website, where drivers could easily find them.

Agency officials said last year that the new rules are needed because “there is no authority to treat these egregious behaviors and convictions similarly to other convictions that qualify drivers to be considered impaired drivers.”

The agency predicted a 40 percent increase in the number of drivers “classified as persistent offenders” as a result of the six-month extension.

The DMV persistent violation hearing is separate from the license revocation hearing and specifically allows judges to permanently revoke a person’s right to drive. Drivers with just one 11-point violation will not receive persistent offender status under the new rules.

Unfortunately, a suspended or revoked license does not mean that a person will not continue to try to drive — operating without a license is a chronic and deadly problem.

However, attorney Steve Vaccaro, who represents road accident victims, told Streetsblog he was “thrilled” with the changes to the points system.

In addition, DMV’s decision to include aggravated unlicensed operation in the points system will give victims and their families additional ammunition in civil lawsuits against drivers.

“There is the potential for the DMV license revocation to become facts that would be relevant and could be introduced in the context of a civil case,” Vaccaro said. “Juries don’t know or understand how popular driving without a license has become since the pandemic. This is a way of being able to inform the jury that this happened.”

That said, the new guidelines still leave a perverse loophole in the points system that safety advocates have long protested: A drunk driver is still incentivized to flee the scene of an accident — which now earns five points — rather than stay on the spot to have his drunkenness was confirmed, which could lead to an 11-point penalty.

A similar discrepancy exists in the criminal code, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez he pointed out.