Green Cabbie Who Killed a Brooklyn Pedestrian Drove Car with 14 Moving Violations
The cab driver who ran over and killed a Brooklyn pedestrian last month remains in good standing with the city, despite a 2016 speeding ticket that put four points on his license.
And the Taxi and Limousine Commission said that driver Ibrahim Odeh remains on the road, despite that speeding ticket and the Dec. 2 crash that killed Yaosen Tan near the intersection of Avenue V and W. 11th Street in Gravesend. A cabbie can have his license suspended with six points in 15 months, but no points were issued after the crash.
Odeh may be one of the safer drivers of the green cab, which is registered to Mohammed Hanish. According to public records, the car has received 12 camera-issued speeding tickets, plus two red-light tickets, since January, 2015. There have been many 15-month periods where the car racked up far more than six points, though it is unclear how many drivers the car has (see violations, right).
Media outlets are slow to realize that a trove of data is available about cars that strike and kill pedestrians. The Daily News version of this story made no mention of the prior moving violations attributed to the green cab, but Streetsblog was able to cite the driving record to gain additional information from the TLC, including Odeh’s 2016 speeding violation, which was not a camera violation.
Odeh’s record — and the lax manner in which Hanish oversees the driving of people who use his cab — is relevant because it shows that he and other cabbies routinely flout speed limit laws and how little can be done about drivers with extensive camera violations. A TLC spokeswoman said that camera-issued red light tickets can go on a driver’s record — but camera-issued speeding tickets cannot.
Of course, the NYPD did not mention any of that in the agency’s statement about Tan’s death, which was issued on Friday morning. Instead, the agency blamed Tan because he “emerged from between two parked vehicles” on the north side of Avenue V.
The police narrative did not provide details on why Odeh, 70, failed to stop after turning onto Avenue V from W. 11th Street. The police narrative does not say if he was speeding or distracted by his phone, as many cab drivers are. The crash caused fatal injuries from which Tan died two days later.
Odeh remained on scene and was not charged.
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