Most likely her right to operate has been suspended. That is typical, but not necessarily uniform throughout states. If this has ocurred, your GF can't drive anywhere in the USA and will likely be denied a car rental.

It's also possible that the county in which she failed to appear has some form of contempt or other failure to appear mechanism. That would be separate and apart from the underlying ticket on which she failed to appear.

Finally, it's entirely possible that a bored clerk at some small county actually did or might enter the warrant or that for one reason or another, some check might be made of local records.

Short answer is that you can't be sure of what's going to happen other than that the fine will keep increasing and that some day, she's going to need to take care of it. Better today at $800 than sometime in the future at $8,000.