A violent felon shouldn’t be allowed to own a gun. A Level 3 registered sex offender shouldn’t be able to work at a day care. And by the exact same logic, someone who’s proven chronically unwilling or unable to abide by the rules of the road shouldn’t be allowed to get behind the wheel of a car — which is a deadly weapon when driven irresponsibly. American freedoms, which are worth defending, have never extended to the ability to actively endanger other people.
Cops say Miriam Yarimi, a wig-maker with a terrible driving record was operating the car that took the lives of a mother and her two children in Brooklyn last week. They say she was driving illegally, on a suspended license, going twice the speed limit. She sped through a red light, crashed into a car and hit the three pedestrians as they were crossing the street. Three lives were snuffed out in violence every bit as gruesome and sudden as that we associate with murder by firearm.
About that suspended license: Since August 2023, Yarimi’s car has racked up 99 tickets, including 21 camera-issued speeding tickets and five red-light violations. On social media, she has admitted, practically boasted, of driving around “like a chicken without a head” to get her products to her clients.
The trouble here is simple: Though Yarimi’s license had been suspended, she still had access to her car, and despite living in the city with the best public transportation in America, she still felt the need to drive it, and to drive it like a maniac. That probably couldn’t have been stopped unless she had been incarcerated — but two things should happen now.
One, Yarimi must face sure and swift punishment, while lawmakers move to impose stricter punishment for anyone driving on a suspended license. It’s now a crime with a range of mostly monetary penalties depending on aggravating factors. Much too soft.
Two, the state Senate and Assembly should pass, and Gov. Hochul should sign, Brooklyn Sen. Andrew Gounardes’ very good bill to require speed-limiting technology to be installed on the vehicles of cars with terrible safety records, preventing them from going over whatever the speed limit is where they’re driving, whether 30 or 40 or 55.
What would trigger mandatory installation of the limiter? Under Gounardes’ legislation, it would be an accumulation of 11 or more points on a license in a 24-month period, or getting six speed- or red-light camera tickets in a year. The exact details should be negotiable, but there’s no question that New York State must make it harder for people who show reckless disregard for public safety on the roads to put others at risk.
Virginia — which has a Republican governor — just passed such a super-speeder bill, spurred on by more than 25,000 speed-related crashes in 2023, nearly 500 of which were deadly. It’ll become law mid-next year.
New York State and City have two choices after a 2024 in which 16 children and 121 pedestrians were killed in traffic crashes: Continue to act as though such “accidents” are as uncontrollable as the weather, or take seriously the behavior that produces such deadly outcomes.
The only real choice is the second one, which means going after the worst drivers before they turn more kids into roadkill.
