New York City's most prolifically reckless drivers will soon be at risk of losing their vehicles under new legislation poised to pass the City Council this week.
The Reckless Driver Accountability Act will require drivers who rack up five red light tickets or 15 school speed zone violations within a one year period to take a safe driving course [UPDATE: The legislation passed on Tuesday by a vote of 41-5]. If they fail to do so, the NYC Sheriff can seize and impound their vehicles. But drivers whose vehicles are seized can get them back once they complete the course.
The legislation was first proposed by Brooklyn Councilman Brad Lander nearly two years ago, after a driver suddenly accelerated through a red light in Park Slope, killing two children and injuring two others, including a woman whose pregnancy was terminated as a result of the crash. The woman behind the wheel, Dorothy Bruns, was received 12 traffic violations in the previous two years.
"As we learned about her history of camera violations in the hours after that crash, we figured out that we could’ve seen that she was likely to crash and intervened," Lander told Gothamist on Monday. "This started on that horrible day and has been on a long road since."
Challenges to New York City's speed camera program accounted for some of the delay, along with ambivalence from Mayor Bill de Blasio. He got on board with the legislation once the number of drivers it impacted was reduced: While a previous version would've applied to any vehicles with five or more red light or speeding tickets — a threshold that would've put roughly 26,000 vehicles in the sheriff's crosshairs — the recently-amended bill is expected to cover roughly 5,000 drivers.
According to Lander, that revision was necessary to get the program off the ground, and may be tweaked in the future. "This will cover the top quarter of one percent of all drivers," he said. "If it works, we can look at the rest of that one percent. We’re better off standing up a program that will really work."
Roughly 80 percent of drivers who receive a speed camera violation don't get a second ticket within three years, according to the DOT. A much smaller percentage of drivers are receiving consistent camera violations. The latter group is responsible for a disproportionate percentage of traffic violence, Lander said.
Drivers who meet the new threshold will be expected to complete a 90-minute safety course, modeled after the "restorative justice" program currently underway in Red Hook. Drivers who've participated in the course are 40 percent less likely to receive violations for driving recklessly than their counterparts who did not take the class, according to Transportation Alternatives Director Marco Conner.
"The goal is not to confiscate the cars for the sake of confiscating them," Conner said. "It’s to educate drivers, change their behavior, and if that fails, then to get the worst drivers off the streets until they complete the program."
The bill moved out of the Transportation Committee on Monday and is widely expected to pass the City Council on Tuesday. If all goes as planned, Lander said, it will be implemented in eight months.
"We've still got a long way to go where we don’t have preventable crashes," he added. "This is a step forward."
