The police officer returned Angela-Renee Coakley’s license and registration and asked for the keys to her car. It was midafternoon on one of the first nice days of spring, and Ms. Coakley, a 53-year-old event and concert producer from Brooklyn, had driven to Staten Island to do some errands. Instead of finishing them, she would be handcuffed, taken to the local precinct to be fingerprinted and locked in a cell — all for failing to pay a traffic ticket. “I was virtually moved to tears,” she recalled a month later, smartly dressed and awaiting her turn in a Staten Island courtroom. “It was all surreal and ridiculous — for a fine.”

In New York State, a driver can lose her license for reckless behavior on the road, like driving under the influence of alcohol or accumulating too many driving violation points.

But more often than not, licenses are suspended for outstanding debt: If a person fails to pay a traffic ticket or does not show up in court to dispose of it, the court can notify the Department of Motor Vehicles, which then imposes a “scoff” — short for scofflaw — that suspends the person’s driving privileges until the debt is paid.

Nearly two-thirds of all license suspensions are for failure to pay tickets or failure to appear in court, according to D.M.V. data. These suspensions are not a rebuke for poor driving; if the motorist had paid her ticket, she would still be allowed on the road. Yet the consequences are just as stiff: Anyone caught driving with a suspended license — whether or not she is aware of it — may be arrested.