Reckless driver accountability act
NEW YORK, NY – According to bklyner.com, road safety advocates are rallying behind lawmakers who have presented the Reckless Driver Accountability Act. The act was entered last June by Council Member Lander. A horrific pedestrian accident in Park Slope that killed two young children and an unborn baby sparked the Council Member’s actions. The driver who killed the victims, Dorothy Bruns, had been issued 8 traffic violations in the two years prior to the accident, had previously had her license suspended and was guilty of an earlier hit-and-run crash.
The investigation found that Bruns had been told multiple times by her physicians that she should not be driving because she suffered from a number of medical conditions. At the time of the fatal crash, Bruns claims that she had suffered a seizure. Bruns was facing about 15 years in prison but died in November of an apparent suicide.
Lander stated that after the Park Slopes collision, crashes caused by reckless drivers have continued to plague the streets. The Council Member says that car crashes kill more children under 14 than anything else in New York City, and are the second leading cause of fatalities in seniors. These statistics remain true even after the Vision Zero initiative managed to reduce motor vehicle deaths in the city.
Under the proposed legislation, any vehicle that violated five or more speed camera or red camera violations within a year would be impounded or booted until the vehicle’s owner completed a Reckless Driver Accountability Program. These drivers are considered the top 1 percent of the most dangerous drivers in the city. There is a total of 26,000 people who fit into this category in NYC.
The plan would also require the city to complete a study on the types of driver behaviors that are the most dangerous and most likely to contribute to crashes, injuries, and deaths.
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