DOT Still Doesn’t Know When It Will Launch the ‘Stop Super Speeder’ Program
City officials on Tuesday refused to say if they will implement a state-approved program to install speed-limiting devices inside the cars of the city’s worst speeders by a May 27, 2027 launch date pushed by the City Council — raising concerns of a delay.
At a hearing over a Council bill to start the so-called “Stop Super Speeders” program next May, Department of Transportation Commissioner Mike Flynn declined to offer a firm launch date, instead bringing up challenges with implementation, such as “software and back-end” issues that he said are “kind of dependent on partners.”
Under questioning from the bill’s sponsor Council Member Kayla Santosuosso (D-Bay Ridge), Flynn promised that at least something would be in place by the date proposed in the Council bill.
“If there are things that are maybe outside our control for the full program rollout,” he said, “we think that we could at least give some early elements and testing.”
Council members weren’t pleased with the vague answers and possibility that the program — one of the biggest victories for street safety advocates in years — might be delayed.
“Every day that super speeders careen down our streets is another day of danger for our communities,” said Council Member Shaun Abreu, the chairman of the Transportation Committee. “Speed is of the essence here. I am concerned.”
And a spokesperson for Transportation Alternatives, which led the years-long fight to require speed-limiting devices inside the cars of the most reckless drivers, called for urgency.
“A small minority of drivers are continuing to speed with abandon and even rack up hundreds of tickets,” said Alexa Sledge, the group’s spokesperson. “These drivers are dangerous, they’re reckless, and it’s only a matter of time before they kill or seriously injure another New Yorker. We’re counting on the … DOT to implement the bill early next year as outlined in the state legislation. We can’t afford to wait while the deadliest drivers continue to speed through school zones every single day.”
Concerns about the program’s implementation first surfaced in September, when a city official told reporters on a background call that DOT was “probably over a year away” from launching the program — a comment that suggested DOT was already four months behind that May 2027 deadline originally proposed by the state legislation and continued in the Council bill.
The Council bill will require the city to order car owners who receive 16 school-zone camera-issued speeding tickets in a 12-month period to install a device in their vehicle to prevent it from exceeding the speed limit. Car owners will be required to install the devices in all their cars at their expense.
The state law that authorized the program requires the Department of Motor Vehicles to revoke the registration of drivers who fail to install the device — but that’s only for vehicles registered in New York. That’s no small issue given that 32 percent of drivers with more than 16 speed-camera tickets have out-of-state plates.
The proposed Council bill would further require the city to punish all drivers who ignore speed-limiter requirements by increasing their future speeding tickets from $50 to at least $1,500.
At Tuesday’s hearing, this key piece of the legislative puzzle — about which Streetsblog has asked DOT repeatedly — seemed new to Flynn.
“I think we can suspend [out-of-state drivers’] privileges to drive in New York State,” Flynn said, before Santosuosso pointed out that the state legislation revokes New York drivers’ vehicle registration, not their license. (An aide for Flynn clarified that the increased fine, a violation that would move through traffic court, would apply equally to all drivers.)
The imperative to get the program up and running is clear: The number of drivers qualifying as super-speeders is rising, with 16,500 vehicles qualifying so far this year, according to research by Transportation Alternatives reported last week by Hell Gate. It’s a 12-percent increase over the number of such cars in 2025.
Some of those 16,500 drivers speed so frequently that they might qualify as super-speeders just weeks after the program launches, meaning that a four-month delay by DOT in implementing the program could have deadly consequences.
One such driver is James Giovansanti, an NYPD cop revealed by Streetsblog to have with 547 speed-camera and red-light tickets since 2022 on his 4,800-pound truck. Staten Island residents spoke of alarming encounters with the speeding cop and the NYPD took away his driving privileges.
Giovansanti paid all his tickets, so he’s never faced any legal repercussions for his actions. (Camera-issued tickets, after all, are considered issued to a vehicle and not a driver; they come with significant financial penalties but not with criminal penalties or points on a license.)
If the super-speeder law had been in place in 2022, Giovansanti would have had to install speed-limiter on all his cars just weeks after he started driving the truck. And data suggests he’s one of at least 10 drivers who would similarly qualify within six weeks of the law’s implementation.
Another member of the Council hoped for quick action from DOT now.
“Council Member Santosuosso’s legislation to slow down the most dangerous chronic speeding drivers in New York City cannot be implemented soon enough,” said Council Member Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn). “We need to get this bill swiftly passed and signed into law to ensure DOT is ready to implement this urgent safety legislation by May 2027 — if not sooner.”
— with Gersh Kuntzman
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