New York should use its red-light and speed cameras to prevent deadly crashes.
In early March, a tow-truck driver fatally crushed a woman crossing the street in the crosswalk in Brooklyn. It was not the first time this vehicle had caused a deadly crash: The same truck had run over and killed a woman in Queens, also in the crosswalk, five months previously. The reality is that New York is plagued by traffic deaths caused by vehicles with histories of traffic violations, and it’s time for the City to use red-light and speed-camera data to do something about it.
New York has long employed broken-windows policing as a strategy not only to address quality-of-life complaints but to prevent more serious crime, because people who commit small infractions — such as jumping over a subway turnstile — disproportionately go on to commit violent offenses. A similar approach can work to make pedestrians, bicyclists and everyone else who shared the roads safer from reckless drivers.
Until recently, New York City traffic deaths fell steadily, from a high of 701 in 1990 to a low of 206 in 2018, bucking a national trend in recent years. That’s thanks to two big factors: redesign of the streets to make more room for pedestrians and cyclists, and enforcing the law, including through 150 red-light camera zones and 750 speed-camera zones, enabled by state legislation over the past quarter-century and decade respectively.
New York can go further, though — especially as traffic deaths, like murders, have ticked up in the post-COVID years. In 2023, traffic deaths reached 262, 27% above the record low.
The city’s most dangerous vehicles are not a secret. In an original analysis, I cross-referenced NYPD license-plate data from 142 fatal crashes in 2022 — representing 55% of the fatalities that year — against the City’s public database of red-light and speed-camera tickets.
If New York City had been able to keep vehicles with five or more speed- or red-light tickets off the roads in 2022, the city could have saved as many as 26 lives, out of the total of 142 lives lost in this 2022 dataset, reducing the death toll by 18%.
I found vehicles rack up ticket after ticket, via the camera enforcement, for their persistent reckless behavior, before a disproportionate share of them end up killing someone. These 142 crashes involved 225 vehicles, including 191 vehicles with license plates, that had collectively accumulated 772 tickets, with 63% of fatal crashes involving a vehicle with a ticket history, 23% which had received 10 or more tickets in the months and years preceding the crash. An additional 24% had received between five and nine tickets.
Moreover, vehicles involved in a fatal crash were disproportionately likely to have received a ticket in just the year preceding the fatal crash. Eighty-seven plated vehicles across 74 fatal crashes had a ticket history within the 12 months leading up to the fatal crash, with a cumulative total of 387 such tickets.
If New York City had been able to keep vehicles with five or more speed- or red-light tickets off the roads in 2022, the city could have saved as many as 26 lives, out of the total of 142 lives lost in this 2022 dataset, reducing the death toll by 18%.
The city could have saved the lives of up to 11 pedestrians, nine vehicle occupants, five motorcyclists or moped drivers, and one cyclist. Extrapolating this 18% reduction in fatalities to all car crashes in 2022 — including those not in this dataset provided by the NYPD — would have reduced the death toll by up to 47.
First, the state legislature should allow for the revocation of New York State vehicle registration after five speed- or red-light tickets within 12 months. Second, it should allow the City to levy an escalating fine after the first two tickets: for example, doubling from the current $50 to $100 for the third ticket, $200 for the fourth, $400 for the fifth, and so forth.
New York needs to do exactly that. With enabling state legislation, the city should use camera data to take vehicles (exempting emergency vehicles like ambulances) with five or more speed or red-light tickets within one year off the road.
The state Legislature can implement two measures to reduce reckless driving. First, it should allow for the revocation of New York State vehicle registration after five speed- or red-light tickets within 12 months. Second, it should allow the City to levy an escalating fine after the first two tickets: for example, doubling from the current $50 to $100 for the third ticket, $200 for the fourth, $400 for the fifth, and so forth.
The legislature should empower the state Department of Motor Vehicles to help, by authorizing the impoundment vehicles that remain in persistent violation of speed and red-light laws. (A city-led pilot program between 2021 and 2023 yielded inconclusive results, in part part because of the program’s limited scope.) Finally, the state and city should explore how insurance companies could use ticket data to adjust insurance rates. Although drivers accumulate driving records, it is vehicles that are insured. A vehicle that habitually accumulates red-light and speed-camera tickets is an unsafe vehicle.
Vehicles whose drivers accumulate five or more speed- and red-light camera tickets a year are not driven by New York’s “average drivers.” For the average vehicle, red-light and speed-camera tickets are rare — the average vehicle receives far fewer than one violation per year.
Habitual camera violators, by contrast, are disproportionately likely to be involved in a fatal crash (to say nothing of serious injuries and general menacing behavior on the road). Subjecting such vehicles to heightened enforcement of traffic laws would make New York City’s roads safer, without harming the average driver.