‘Stop Super Speeders’: Preventing The Next Fatal Crash Is Up To You

You — yes, you, the person reading this — could prevent the next deadly crash in New York City.

Every year, hundreds of New Yorkers are killed in traffic crashes by drivers with a habit of speeding. But by making just a couple of phone calls today, you could change that. Here’s how:

Earlier this year, Gov. Hochul put in her executive budget a version of the existing, but stalled, Stop Super Speeders Act (S4045/A2299), to enable a pilot program allowing New York City to require drivers with many speed-camera tickets to have a device installed in their vehicle preventing them from exciting the posted speed limit. Fewer than 1 percent of drivers would be affected.

The device, called Intelligent Speed Assistance, functions like ignition interlock devices that have long been required for drunk-driving offenders: same logic, same proportionality, same lifesaving potential, and the same ability to keep driving. The State Senate passed it last year. Gov. Hochul wants it. Mayor Mamdani, city Department of Transportation Commissioner Flynn, the City Council, and the City Comptroller support it. As do the Manhattan and Brooklyn District Attorneys and Borough Presidents. They are backed by the National Transportation Safety Board, AAA-Northeast, and AARP-NY, and over 170 other organizations.

Here’s why the bill is so vital: New York City’s 10-worst super speeders averaged 179 school-zone speed camera tickets each in 2025 alone. One driver accumulated more than 1,000 tickets since 2023 and paid nearly $64,000 in fines without changing his behavior at all (camera tickets do not count as points on a license). These drivers are dangerous — a vehicle with 17 tickets is twice as likely to be involved in a crash that seriously injures or kills someone, and a vehicle with 30 tickets is 22 times as likely. 

We have to slow down these reckless drivers before they kill someone. But as Hell Gate reported on Tuesday, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie may be working against this common sense proposal.

We must tell the speaker that failing to pass the Stop Super Speeders Act will mean more people dead and injured.

Here’s what to do this week, in order of importance:

Call Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie at (518) 455-3791 or email speaker@nyassembly.gov. Tell him New Yorkers are counting on Assembly leadership to include the Stop Super Speeders Act in the final budget.

Call your local Assembly member (find) and ask them to communicate directly to Speaker Heastie that the Stop Super Speeders Act is a priority, and the Assembly must support it in the budget.

Call Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins at (518) 455-2585. Thank her for the Senate’s support and urge her to keep fight to keep this provision in the final agreement.

Call Gov. Hochul at (518) 474-8390 or visit governor.ny.gov/contact to thank her for championing this proposal and urge her to make sure it makes it into the final deal.

It will take five minutes. It could save a life.

We know this because we know what it looks like when it doesn’t happen in time. 

Darnell: My daughter Niyell was 13 years old when an SUV driver struck her on the Upper West Side. She spent a week in the pediatric ICU before she died on Nov. 1, 2024 — days after her birthday. 

Amber: My neighbor Natasha Saada and her two young daughters, Diana and Deborah, were killed on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn on March 29, 2025, by a driver with a long history of school zone speeding violations who continued to drive despite a suspended license — exactly the kind of driver this bill is designed to slow down. I know the terror of that kind of collision not just as a neighbor, but as a survivor: I lived through a serious crash myself, and I carry that with me every time I think about how Natasha and her daughters never got the chance to survive.

We cannot bring them back. But we can make sure the next family’s story ends differently.

Albany has the tools. The budget window is closing. The usual delay tactics are being deployed. Make the calls — they work.

Over the years, thanks to thousands of New Yorkers who called, wrote, and emailed their elected leaders, New York City won the right to lower its speed limits and expand its massively successful speed- and red-light camera program that prevents countless crashes and fatalities every year.

These programs work — and they show the power of mass action. Let’s unleash the power of the people again to finally rein in the most reckless drivers.