‘Predictable’: Manhattan Mom Struck by Driving Scofflaw Wants Known Super Speeders off the Road

A driver with a long record ran down a woman and her baby — and now the victim is calling out lawmakers for not doing enough to get recidivist reckless drivers off the road before they injure or kill someone.

Driver Inson Dubois Wood, who got 38 speed camera violations and dozens more tickets in the two-and-a-half years before he ran a red light, made an illegal left turn and accelerated into a crosswalk on York Avenue where Manhattan mom Emma Thebault was crossing with her infant son in tow on Oct. 18 of last year.

Thebault, who along with her child suffered injuries and psychological trauma from the harrowing crash, has sued Wood, a swanky interior designer and architect, for damages.

“My recollection is that I saw the car’s light speeding up towards me, then I blacked out. And then my next memory is being in the air, before I even touched the ground,” she told Streetsblog. “I was focused on my baby, tied to my body, and my whole brain was kind of checking on him. And then I hit the ground on my head, and I heard my son’s hit the ground as well.”

Videos from the crash show Wood barreling around other drivers waiting for the light ahead of him at E. 63rd Street, then accelerating into Thebault and other pedestrians traversing the east-side crosswalk with the walk signal.

Thebault, who saw her own blood dripping onto her son in the immediate aftermath of the crash, had no idea if her son was okay. The experience traumatized her, she said.

“He was crying so that was the reassuring part, but I couldn’t know exactly how good or bad he was,” she said. “You are left with your kid for this time waiting for first responders and you don’t know what to do, and you are left with the fact that you might witness your kid dying in your arms. You can’t go back after you have experienced this stress as a mother.”

All that could have been prevented if the city and state governments took proactive steps to get known reckless drivers like Wood off the road: The Toyota driver, who covered his car in cop-adjacent stickers and has a National Police Defense Foundation license plate, received 184 moving violations and parking tickets prior to the crash, and 14 such violations in the month since the crash.

Drivers with an average of 24.2 speed camera violations are 11 times more likely to kill or severely injure someone while driving compared to someone with 14.2 violations, according to a 2024 study by the city. Wood had 23 in the year before he slammed into Thebault and her son — and another two in the days and weeks afterwards.

Thebault alleged “gross negligence,” “recklessness” and “intentional misconduct” on the part of Wood in her Jan. 9 lawsuit for punitive damages.

“The crash was no random ‘accident,’ but rather the predictable consequence of Wood’s years-long and near-daily habit of speeding and committing other traffic violations,” the suit said.

Wood acknowledged seeing Thebault, but claimed she was on her cell phone — a claim contradicted by video of the crash. Even if that was true, Thebault’s alleged actions do not absolve Wood of his dangerous behavior, according to her lawyer, who argues that Wood’s public driving record make him especially culpable for the collision.

“He was doing something totally wrong, and he does things wrong in his car so often that he has actually hit people or damaged property three prior times in the last three years,” said Thebault’s attorney Steve Vaccaro of Vaccaro Law, who has represented countless crash victims in New York City.  

All crashes can leave lasting scars. The young mother said she feels she has been “minimized in the urban space,” and that the experience has shown her the true meaning of the term “road violence.” 

“You are redimensioned to your body and to the possibility of your death, because you can be hit at any moment in the street,” said Thebault when describing the way the crash changed her life. “You are deprived of the denial of all the risks you are living with in your daily life, and denial is a very healthy mental phenomenon that enables you to go through life without being eaten by anxiety.” 

The case shows the need for proactive measures to get drivers like Wood off the road — since tickets alone failed to curb his recklessness, Thébault said. Wood received a puny $250 fine for striking Thébault and her son then sent on his way to commit more violations with his car.

“If running a red light and hitting a mother and a seven-month-old baby results in a fine of $250, the same as parking twice in front of a hydrant, what then is blocking people from disrespecting the law?” said Thebault. “We are relying on people’s willingness to be good citizens. And they are moving in potential death machines, and the only thing that enables pedestrians not to struggle for life when they move from one sidewalk to another is this social consensus.”

The city tried to use the “Dangerous Vehicle Abatement Program” to get reckless drivers off the road, but it had little teeth and expired in 2023. Since then. so-called “super speeders” have continued to cause carnage — like Miriam Yarimi, who hit and killed Natasha Saada and her two children on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn last spring.

Advocates want the state to pass a “stop super speeder” law to require recidivist speeders like Wood and Yarimi to install speed limiting technology in their cars.

“In the case of Wood it is pretty clear that the $50 fines that he racks up on a regular basis do not dissuade him from this activity,” said Vaccaro. There needs to be a systematic legislative framework that puts the burdens of harm on the reckless drivers, that increases their insurance rates, installs speed governors, and ultimately takes their licenses when they refuse to follow the rules that everyone is supposed to follow.”

Supporters of the “Stop Super Speeders” legislation hope it gets over the finish line this year, after Gov. Hochul included it in her proposed budget.

“This is an example of what we’ve long known: when someone racks up speeding tickets and the government fails to act, it’s often only a matter of time before something horrible happens,” bill sponsor State Sen. Andrew Gounardes (D-Brooklyn) said of Thebault’s case. “I’m deeply relieved Emma and her [child] are alive, but they shouldn’t have had to suffer through this. We know serial speeders pose an outsized risk, and we have the data to prove it.”

It’s not clear where the legislation will land, however, as Hochul has instead prioritized = slashing compensation for some people hit and injured by drivers in order to cut insurance costs for drivers like Wood.

To Thebault, the fact that politicians would even consider prioritizing drivers over the much more vulnerable pedestrians and cyclists is nonsensical.

“You have space, it is shared with people walking or biking with their bodies exposed to their environment, and cars,” she said. “How do you want to shape your city or your environment? Do you want to protect big metal boxes, or do you want to protect people? That’s all. That’s the bottom line.

“At the end of the day either you enable people to live and to move through space or you amplify the risks for them to circulate in the public space. I have been taught as a child that rights come with duties and power with accountability. Car drivers must respect the traffic rules to keep others safe, even other drivers. This Kindergarten logic must be enforced. Any type of discourse around this is just political, when I hear all these debates, to me, there is no debate. We need to protect people. Period.”

Wood did not respond to Streetsblog’s request for comment.