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Neither case mentioned held that a drivers license was unnecessary.
Thompson v. Smith (1930) 155 Va. 367, 154 S.E. 579, 71 A.L.R. 604, held that a town's police chief could not revoke someone's DL at whim without due process. But it did not say that someone could operate a car (or whatever terminology someone wants) without a DL; quite the contrary, it accepted the contrary - that a person could not drive if his DL was revoked.
Teche Lines Inc. v. Danforth (1943) 195 Miss. 226, 12 So.2d 784, did not even deal with a DL. A bus had stopped to let off a passenger where this left less than 20 feet of clear road width. The plaintiff's decedent rear-ended the bus and was killed. The plaintiff argued that defendant bus line should automatically lose the lawsuit because state law required buses to leave 20 feet clearance. The Mississippi Supreme Court said that it was common knowledge that a lot of roads in the state were too narrow for any bus to comply with the law, but the law does not require impossibilities.
The bus passenger had a right to get off at the bus stop -- and at this point the court recited this quotation from Thompson v. Smith about the right to travel, and said that this right not only includes starting a journey, and continuing the journey, but also, significantly, to end the journey when the destination is reached. So requiring the bus to keep moving until the road was sufficiently wide (probably a considerable distance) impaired the passenger's rights. Therefore the court remanded the case with instructions that the trial court consider what would be suitable and safe bus operation if the road was simply too narrow to enable compliance with the law about 20 feet clearance. Since the right to travel was mentioned only with reference to the bus passenger, it clearly did not, in this case, did not involve the requirement (or non-requirement) of a DL.
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