More Drivers With Bogus Plates Evading Traffic Cams, Costing NYC Up to $75M

Bent, covered up, and outright phony license plates have allowed drivers in the city to dodge red light and speeding cameras some 1.5 million times since the pandemic started — and the problem is only getting worse.

April 26, 2022 Reuven Blau, THE CITY

The bent plate on this Honda Odyssey in The Bronx shows how some tampering can look accidental. Photos by Hiram Alejandro Duran/THE CITY

Opening the window

For years, some safe street advocates have called on the NYPD and the city’s Sheriff’s Office to do more to target evaders.

Adams last month called on the state Legislature to give the city more power to operate the cameras 24/7. Currently, the speed cameras can only be “active Monday to Friday, 6:00 AM to 10:00 PM, and the program is set to expire this year,” according to the press release.

Legislation to expand the city’s camera powers is set to be drafted shortly, said State Sen. Andrew Gounardes (D-Brooklyn), who noted state lawmakers were focused on the budget in recent weeks.

Drivers passed a speed camera near the intersection of East Tremont and Anthony avenues in The Bronx, April 15, 2022.

Adams held the March 25 press conference at the intersection of Ocean Avenue and Beverley Road near P.S. 245 in Flatbush, Brooklyn. That was the site where “the driver of a speeding car ran a red light at high speed, ramming a second car in its side” on August 18, 2020, according to the press release.

The 3:30 a.m. crash killed 18-year-old Isaiah Benloss in the rear seat of the second car. Speed cameras were turned off at that time as required by state law.

The alleged hit-and-run driver had temporary, untraceable New Jersey license plates that police have been unable to find. No arrest has been made.

“My job is to prevent New Yorkers from dying in our streets, and I need Albany to give me the tools to do my job,” Adams told reporters, urging state lawmakers to give him so-called “home rule control” over the speed and red-light cameras.

Roughly 30 percent of fatal crashes last year happened in zones that had cameras but at times when they couldn’t operate, according to DOT data.

Overall, the DOT says there’s been an approximately 72 percent drop in speeding at locations with speed cameras and a roughly 80 percent drop in red light running in areas with those cameras, according to annual reports on the programs.

All told, the city has about 1,960 fixed speed cameras in 750 school zones established by state lawmakers under the 2019 speed-camera law. Separately, the city operates 40 mobile cameras within those same areas.

The DOT plans to continue to add cameras until it reaches a total of 2,220 with the remaining 220 set to be installed this year, according to DOT spokesperson Scott Gastel.

DOT also operates 223 red-light cameras at 150 intersections, a number that has been static since 2009. Bridge and tunnel toll cameras aren’t included in this data.

The DOT has contracted with American Traffic Solutions, known as Verra Mobility since 2018, to administer and maintain speed cameras, red-light cameras and bus-lane cameras. The Arizona-based firm is being paid $367,163,436 as part of a three-year contract from January 2022 to Dec. 31, 2024, city records show.

Equity in enforcement

Some of the transgressors are routinely parked near police precincts, according to Streetsblog, which ran a “March Madness” like competition. The transportation news site last month spotted multiple cars around stationhouses with out of state license plates and a history of parking or speeding violations.

The Twitter feed PlacardCorruption posts daily examples of illegal vehicle practices like obscured plates, bogus permits and flagrant parking on sidewalks or in front of hydrants. Top city officials charged with enforcing the rules who are tagged in the posts rarely, if ever, respond.

From January to March of this year, cops issued 1,280 plate-related moving violation tickets, down from 4,355 in the same quarter last year, according to NYPD traffic data. Overall, moving violation tickets fell 5 percent in the quarter.

The drop in overall NYPD in-person traffic enforcement comes as other police departments throughout the country have backed off pulling over drivers for low-level offenses. Data has shown that cops have for years disproportionately targeted Black drivers sometimes with fatal outcomes.

“Equity has to be playing into road safety,” said AAA spokesperson Robert Sinclair. “It’s unfair and leads to dangerous and unsafe situations when you target people of a particular population for being stopped perhaps when nothing is amiss.”

As for the broader obscured license plate issue, Sinclair speculated that drivers squeezed by an increase in gas prices and inflation might be seeking to save money by ducking tickets.

“It’s the overall economy,” he said. “It’s tough everywhere you look and gasoline is one of the main reasons we are seeing inflation so high. It might be an attempt to economize on the part of less than scrupulous drivers.”

Street safety problems are typically addressed by one of the three Es: education, enforcement or engineering, he added.

The city DOT has never run an education campaign specifically tied to the license issue.

In an effort to improve street safety, Transportation Alternatives and other advocates are urging the Adams administration to “fully fund and expand the NYC streets plan.”

The City Council has committed $3.1 billion in funding for the plan which calls for the construction of hundreds of miles of protected bike and bus lanes as well as one million square feet of car-free pedestrian space.

The group is also lobbying for the passage of the Crash Victim Rights and Safety Act to allow lower speed limits to be set.

Meanwhile on Saturday, Adams announced what he described as a “historic investment of more than $900 million in traffic safety” over the next five years.