Cracking down on rising aggressive driving incidents

Shalina Chatlani, Tribune News Service

On a frigid December morning along busy Broadway in the Astoria neighbourhood of Queens, New York, pedestrians walk rapidly toward the subway. Cars and e-bikes speed along a busy two-lane road and blast through sharp turns during the early rush to get to the office. In recent years on this stretch of Broadway, cars have struck and killed pedestrians, crashed into businesses, and collided with parking meters, ripping them out of the ground. For nearly 50 years, John Arvanitis has owned the Omonia Café on Broadway. He said he doesn’t see much enforcement of traffic laws.

“They have a sign that says ‘25,’ but sometimes people go fast. They’ll go past the light,” said Arvanitis, 70. He added that motorcycles and bikes speed down the street too.

One of his diners, 58-year-old Gail Grigaux, chimed in to say that she often sees vehicles buzzing through red lights — and even barrelling down the sidewalk. “There’s all these mopeds and e-bikes that are really dangerous. Just walking on the street and all of a sudden they zoom right by you,” Grigaux said. “It’s really frightening because I’m helping my elderly mother, and she can’t respond that quickly to get out of the way.”

Between 2013 and 2022, the number of traffic-related deaths in the United States increased by nearly 23%, from 32,893 to 42,514, according to a March report by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Pedestrian deaths increased by 50% during the same period, the most recent for which numbers are available. The CDC noted that the US fared poorly compared with 27 other high-income countries, where all road-related deaths decreased by a median of more than 19% and pedestrian fatalities declined by a median of nearly 25%. State legislators have noticed. This year, Virginia and Washington enacted laws requiring the installation of speed limiting devices in the vehicles of drivers with multiple speeding or reckless driving violations. New Hampshire and Wisconsin are considering similar legislation to stop so-called super speeders.

So is New York. Democratic state Sen. Andrew Gounardes, the sponsor of New York’s bill, said in an interview that the state has increasingly used automated enforcement tools such as speed cameras in school zones and red-light cameras, but that “it became clear that there was a stubborn subset of drivers who continued to pose a problem because of their repeat recidivism and recklessness.”

Gounardes’ bill would require the installation of a speed limiting device if a driver accumulates 11 or more points on their driving record during a two-year period, or receives six or more speed camera or red-light camera tickets in a year. This year’s legislation in New York and other states comes after a flurry of activity last year, when nine states (Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Utah, plus Washington, DC) enacted 19 measures to curb aggressive or reckless driving, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, a bipartisan policy research group.

In New York, the state Senate approved Gounardes’ bill in June and sent it to the Assembly, where it is stuck in committee. He said that while nobody in either party supports dangerous driving, it can be difficult to push through legislation to curb it. He said some of his colleagues seem to believe that “drivers are entitled to special treatment and that any efforts to hold drivers accountable impinges upon that God-given American right to be free behind the wheel.”

Nevertheless, he said he is confident that the legislation eventually will become law. But Dawn Riendeau, who lives in Queens, knows how difficult it can be to get New York lawmakers to place any limits on drivers. In 2008, her 14-year-old daughter, Angelica Nappi, was killed when a driver with several license suspensions ran a red light and struck the vehicle she was in. For 16 years, Riendeau urged state legislators to approve a law to keep high-risk drivers with multiple license suspensions off the road. It finally went into effect last year. “I was back and forth with Albany, many of the assemblymen and the senators — they didn’t like the way the law was worded. They thought it was too harsh,” Riendeau told Stateline. “It’s just a stepping stone, and there’s definitely much more work that has to be done in order to make our roadway safer, and legislation more punitive.

“Driving is a privilege, and when you get behind the wheel of a car, you have to be very conscious of the decisions that you make,” Riendeau added. “You really can cause a lot of lifetime damage to people.”

Jessica Cicchino, senior vice president of research at the nonprofit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, said dangerous driving worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic, when roads emptied and people were under tremendous stress. “We saw a lot of changes in risky behavior nationwide, more broadly, during the pandemic,” Cicchino said. “We saw people behaving in risky ways, even outside of their cars.” But Cicchino noted that traffic enforcement also declined during the pandemic, as officers were encouraged to social distance and to limit unnecessary interactions with residents.