MENACE FOR HIRE
Rogue cabs stay on streets despite dozens of red-light & speed camera tix
THEY’RE FOR-HIRE hell on wheels.
At least 27 livery and for-hire cars have racked up 27 or more speed or red-light camera violations each since 2014 — yet they have been able to remain on the road.
One livery car — owned by a Brooklyn company with a fleet of for-hire vehicles — amassed 47 violations between Dec. 1, 2014, and Dec. 19, 2017, the most for any taxi, records show.
The black 2011 Toyota sedan has blown through red lights and sped through school zones around the city. It committed 15 of the violations driving on Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn.
The car’s owner currently owes $1,407.73 in unpaid tickets and judgments, records show. But the city Taxi & Limousine Commission still allows the sedan to pick up customers around the city.
Leslie Grant, the president of Metro 387 Corp. — the company that owns the Toyota — steered clear of taking responsibility for the dangerous driving. Even though he is in charge of who uses his car, he blamed the cabbies who operate it.
“It’s not up to me to take their license,” said Grant.
He told the Daily News that he has 300 livery vehicles that he leases to drivers. He said he was unaware that one had racked up so many violations.
As long as the cabbies have a valid TLC-issued license, he’ll give them the keys for a shift, he said.
“The people who are driving out there that TLC authorized to
drive, I have no jurisdiction over them,” Grant said.
The Daily News reported last week that owners of cars who repeatedly receive camera violations never have to fear losing their licenses. That’s because, unlike a police officer who pulls over a vehicle for a traffic infraction, the speed and red-light cameras cannot tell who the driver is.
Instead, the city mails a $50 fine to the owner of the car for the camera violation.
The News reported that there are several bills in the state Legislature to put the brakes on bad drivers, including one from Assemblyman Michael DenDekker (D-Queens) that would suspend the registration of a vehicle for six months if a car received five photo violations in a year.
Mayor de Blasio on Thursday also called on the Legislature to get bad drivers off the road. He proposed laws that would impose increasingly tougher penalties on car owners for each camera violation and eventually yank vehicle registrations.
The mayor’s plea came two weeks after a driver who had racked up eight tickets plowed into two families in Park Slope, Brooklyn, killing two young children. Investigators said the driver, Dorothy Bruns, 44, of Staten Island, had a seizure behind the wheel. They are still investigating the crash and whether she should be criminally charged.
Transit advocates told the Daily News last week that de Blasio doesn’t need Albany’s help to crack down on for-hire cars and cabs because the TLC already regulates them.
Marco Conner, the legislative and legal director for Transportation Alternatives, said the city would need to change some regulations but it could suspend the registration of cabs and for-hire vehicles with loads of red-light camera violations.
“They could dictate to the (taxi and livery) bases that they could not operate vehicles that are continually being used in dangerous ways,” Conner said.
The TLC said it is currently doing what it is legally allowed to do to stop bad hacks.
The agency said it checks trip data against red-light camera violations to see if the hacks committed the infraction while driving a customer.
But the TLC said state law prohibits it from doing the same with speed camera violations — and the change would have to come from Albany.
“State law limits the use of the speed camera pictures, and without on-duty, off-duty information for all drivers, identifying violators is a challenge,” the TLC said in a statement.
“Nevertheless, where it is possible, we use our trip data to match the vehicles that ran red lights with the drivers operating them at that time to ensure the drivers are held accountable.”
The agency said it hopes more will be done to hold bad drivers responsible and is “actively exploring ways to improve our programs.”