A driver with a suspended license and a long history of racing past city speed cameras killed three pedestrians and injured a fourth after slamming into a taxi on Saturday.
Cops said that driver, Miriam Yarimi, 32, was driving her Audi on a suspended license on Ocean Parkway at around 1 p.m. on Saturday when she raced through a light at Quentin Road and smashed into a driver who was turning his TLC-plated Camry right onto Ocean.
Yarimi was piloting the Audi at such high speed that, according to police, the Camry was shoved aside and the Audi continued through the crosswalk, striking a mother and her three children before overturning. The mother and two of the kids, ages 6 and 8, were killed. The third is in serious condition.
The crash occurred in Brooklyn's Orthodox community, where families walk on the Jewish sabbath. Ocean Parkway is typically filled with families.
Four passengers inside the Camry were also injured, but not with life-threatening wounds.
The car Yarimi was driving has more than 90 tickets, including 15 school zone speeding tickets and red-light tickets in the last 12 months, city records show. The car has been nabbed with 20 speed-camera tickets and five red-light tickets since August 2023.
At a presser at the crash site, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch did not go beyond what her investigators had already found and declined to speculate on why Yarimi had a license suspension, but she did say that drivers like her should not be on the roads.
"This was a horrific tragedy caused by someone who should not have been on the road," Tisch said. "A family and a neighborhood were devastated in an instance."
But there's more to this story: The crash will likely renew calls for lawmakers to support legislation in Albany that would require drivers who rack up more than six speed-camera or red-light tickets to install a speed limiter in their car, barring them from exceeding the speed limit by more than five miles per hour.
This is seen as common-sense legislation — similar to a bill that just passed in Virginia last week — that prevents repeat offenders from repeatedly offending. After all, the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators has estimated that, at one point, three-quarters of drivers with a suspended license continue to operate a vehicle, mostly because America is so car-dependent and judges are so unwilling to take cars away from even the worst offenders because many people argue they "need" their car.
"As neighbors exited synagogue on the nicest day of the year, they watched as a crash killed two children and their mother, leaving children’s clothes and shoes strewn across the street from a flipped car," said Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Ben Furnas. “The status quo allows super-speeders to continue to put all our lives in danger, but it doesn’t have to be this way. There is legislation up in Albany that would have required a speed limiter in this very car."
Tisch declined to comment on the bill.
