Thursday's Headlines: More Super Speeders With Badges Endangering Our Kids Edition

It’s worse than we even knew.

As you might recall, Streetsblog has been consistently exposing super speeders who endanger our children by driving recklessly through school zones. The goal, of course, is to get state lawmakers to see the massive scale of the problem caused by a tiny number of recidivists speeders who simply will not slow down, no matter how many of the $50 camera tickets they get.

Our biggest haul last month was catching James Giovansanti, the Staten Island cop with 547 speed- and red-light camera tickets since 2022. Records show that he’s paid them all, but he just won’t slow down (and we can’t take away his license because camera-issued tickets don’t carry points).

And then I personally went to the Bronx office of Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie to put on camera all the cars within sightline of his storefront that have long records of recklessness. That was fun, but it hasn’t apparently changed the Speaker’s mind on keeping his constituents (and himself!) safe from rogue motorists. (That said, maybe it did help: Gothamist reported that the legislature has agreed to include Gov. Hochul’s “Stop Super Speeder” proposal in the budget.)

Then the other day, I showed just how many state officials are getting repeat tickets! As the kids might say, bro, it’s crazy how many people with official New York State license plates are driving so recklessly through school zones!

Well, today we open another chapter in our quest to document this problem: Rental cars.

Transportation Alternatives alerted us the other day that its famous annual super-speeder census only includes vehicles registered as passenger cars. But if you include all cars, you discover that lots of vehicles caught on city speed cameras are registered as “rentals,” which carry the registration code OMS.

When you include those cars, you find a lot of bullshit:

An OMS-plated Toyota — LHW5598 — has 457 speed- and red-light tickets since mid-2024.
An OMS-plated car — KXM7078 — has 506 speed- and red-light tickets since late-2024.
An OMS-plated Mitsubishi — KWC3138 — has 342 speed- and red-light tickets since mid-2023.

The problem? Because driver and car information is shielded from scrutiny because lawmakers (who drive or are driven everywhere) don’t want drivers’ identities to be revealed. So we don’t know much about these rental cars or who’s been driving them.

Or do we? Sometimes a reporter gets lucky. Sometimes, a recidivist reckless driver isn’t satisfied getting hundreds of anonymous speed-camera tickets and ends up getting a regular parking ticket issued by a regular human. And those tickets have a trove of information on them, including whether the perp was deploying an official placard.

From that we learn that three, and possibly a four, of the 12 worst rental car speeders are in city law enforcement! Meet them:

A 2024 Toyota with the license plate LHW6019 has 369 camera-issued speed- and red-light since mid-2024, and the one time an actual traffic cop wrote a ticket — on Fulton Street in Lower Manhattan in May 2024 — the ticket noted that the driver had put a placard from the 109th Precinct in distant Queens on the dash. That’s a cop.
A 2023 Mitsubishi with the license plate KZF9054 has been nabbed 423 times by red-light and speed cameras since April 2023 — but back in June, a ticket officer spotted him illegally parked in Fulton Street in Lower Manhattan, and noted that the car had a NYPD e-permit 5080 on the dash. That’s a cop.
A 2024 Nissan with the plate number LLU8453 has been caught on camera either speeding or running a red light 211 times since late 2024. But in March, when this guy got a ticket for illegally parking on Jay Street in Downtown Brooklyn, the ticket agent noted that he had a District Attorney placard on the dash. That’s someone in law enforcement.
A 2023 Ford with the license plate LPU9809 has been nabbed 251 times by red-light and speed cameras since November 2024 — but last year, when he got a ticket for not having a front plate, the ticket agent indicated that he had a city e-permit on the dashboard (it did not say what agency).

I reached out to the office of Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez and was told only that the office had no idea who rented that car. The NYPD hasn’t provided any information about its scofflaw cops either.

But the unmistakable conclusion? There are a lot more super speeders out there who might be helpful in the fight against super speeders … if they weren’t super-speeders themselves.

In other news:

There are so many videos of Mayor Mamdani on a bike out there right now. Here’s one of him at the Five Boro Bike Tour. Here’s one of Council Member Lincoln Restler taking Hizzoner on a bike tour of Bushwick Inlet Park. And here’s one of him riding the Bergen Bike Bus.
Everyone is bothered by how America’s century-long capitulation to auto makers have made it impossible for people in many parts of the country to hold down a job without having a car — everyone, except the New York Times, which can only seem to complain about gas prices and not all the other ways that car ownership is a tax on the poor.
The Staten Island Advance continues to help drivers on the Rock avoid speed camera tickets. Well, whatever it takes to make them slow down.
The hit-and-run driver who killed Felix Mendez just hours before the city completed a safety project on Bedford Avenue was sentenced to a long jail sentence. (Williamsburg 365)
The Times covered the slight uptick in particulate pollution in the South Bronx. Any increase in pollution is too much (as Streetsblog reported), but the Paper of Record should have pointed out that the increase in pollution is actually below what the MTA predicted in its congestion pricing environmental assessment.
Here’s a driver whose license needs to be scrutinized closely. (WMSBG)
A crossing guard was killed by a driver in New Jersey. (NY Times)
Mayor Mamdani is facing a test over Fair Fares. (Politico)
Good take by Friend of Streetsblog and NY1 legend Pat Kiernan here after the recent crash on the Williamsburg Bridge. Two things can be true: Cyclists need to slow down sometimes and there needs to be more space on the busy span for microbility, including bikes, e-bikes, one-wheels etc.