Eric Adams has vowed to get to the bottom of who is constantly speeding in the car issued to Eric Adams.
After Streetsblog reported that the Borough President's vehicle had racked up 14 school zone speeding tickets in 2019 and 2020 alone, we asked the current frontrunner in the mayoral primary how this long record of reckless driving jibed with his campaign to make public safety a top priority.
"I'm gonna do a deep dive in the data, I'm glad you brought it to my attention, and we'll look at it, and we'll look at all those cars and we'll reexamine that," Adams said at a campaign stop in Brooklyn Bridge Park on Friday morning. "I'm a big believer in driving safe."
Well...
In addition to the 17 school zone speeding tickets, the plate linked to Adams has three red light tickets, and 23 other traffic violations since he took office in 2014, most recently for blocking the same Downtown Brooklyn bus lane three times this past March.
Adams did not directly answer a followup question from the Daily News about whether he was being chauffeured in the car or driving it himself when it received the many serious tickets, but he appeared to acknowledge that his reckless driving record is a liability. (Last January when Streetsblog ran these plates, his office claimed it was a general “agency vehicle.”)
"I can't be an advocate about stopping vehicle crashes, and my drivers are speeding," Adams admitted.
The former NYPD Captain insisted that the tickets were "news to me," and pointed to his history of supporting lower speed limits across the city, and his work with the families of people killed by dangerous drivers.
"If you go to those who have been a part of this battle, like Eric, they'll tell you that I led the charge in decreasing the speed limit in the city because it saved lives," said Eric Adams, referring to himself. "I'm going to continue to be an advocate for that. Those who break the law, they must pay those fines and they're going to be reinstructed by me. I know that when I'm in the car, I'm a big stickler: 'Listen, you have to go within the speed limit.'"
A cursory search of city records compiled by How's My Driving NY suggests that Adams isn't too annoying to his fellow Borough Hall drivers, as the cars parked there on Friday morning with BP-issued parking placards had a raft of speeding tickets too.
Adams's image as a "stickler" for following traffic rules is also undercut by his proclivity to park on the sidewalk and abuse the parking placards issued by the Borough President's office (a DOT spokesperson suggested that Adams’s placards are not official City placards). After Andrew Yang criticized Adams for his history of placard abuse, Adams retorted that the rampant and seemingly bottomless well of corruption perpetrated by city, state, and federal employees with parking placards was a "New Paltz issue" (Yang spent the majority of the pandemic at his home upstate).
Adams was in Brooklyn Bridge Park to receive the endorsement of the carpenters union. "These men and women work hard. We need a mayor who works hard," Adams told the crowd, amid shouts of "blue collar!"
As a campaign prop, the union had parked a box truck with Adams's face on it up the street.
"I have a new truck over there that I'm gonna drive around the whole city," Adams said to laughter.
