D.C. Drivers Face Few Repercussions for Traffic Violations

At-Large Councilmember Christina Henderson tweeted a screenshot Monday of the tickets one District driver has racked up: 245 tickets with a total of $32,150 in fines.

“Excuse my language but what in the absolute eff?!?!” she tweeted. “These aren’t parking tickets. We have a serious problem here.”

Henderson’s example is just a drop in the bucket of the nearly half a billion dollars D.C. is owed in traffic fines. Over 3,000 drivers have more than 20 tickets; 500 drivers have more than 30 tickets, according to Ward 3 Councilmember and chair of the transportation committee Mary Cheh. D.C. has the justification to boot 633,000 vehicles for speeding or parking violations, which means the driver has two or more tickets that haven’t been paid for 60 days. Yet, it isn’t happening. D.C. Department of Public Works Acting Director Christine Davis and Deputy Mayor Lucinda Babers appeared in front of the D.C. Council’s Committee on Transportation and the Environment to explain why.

“Drivers who speed, run red lights or stop signs, and otherwise behave dangerously behind the wheel pose a direct threat,” Cheh said during the hearing yesterday. “A critical strategy for curbing those behaviors is ensuring that tickets are enforced.”

Read more: https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/541875/d-c-drivers-face-few-repercussions-for-traffic-violations/