A Small Group of Drivers Speed Through New York's School Zones Unrestrained, Posing Outsized Dangers to Pedestrians
January 2025
Last fiscal year, around 3 million drivers sped through school zones in New York City, committing nearly 8 million violations. Most only sped once or twice, but a small group of drivers committed speeding violations over and over again.

In this sample distribution, you can see how different shares of drivers contribute to the overall violation tally. For example, 0% of drivers accounted for 0% of speeding violations last year, and 100% of drivers together accounted for all 100% of speeding violations. In between those extremes, there's a story about a small set of drivers speeding rampantly through New York, and together accounting for a significant share of all the city's violations.
Even when limiting one's view to the top 50% of drivers, things start to look disproportionate. These drivers all sped through school zones at least twice last year, and together accounted for over 80% of all violations.
Things get even more extreme when you look at the very top of the distribution. The top 1% of drivers - about 30,000 license plates - accounted for over a tenth of New York's school zone violations last year. All told, they sped through school zones nearly 850,000 times.

Each of these top offenders sped at least 17 times. The worst offender sped over 750 times - more than twice a day on average.
This small group of top offenders drove mostly around Brooklyn and Queens, New York's two most populous boroughs. These boroughs also have light traffic, relative to Manhattan at least, which may allow for easier speeding.
As evidenced by one driver racking up over 750 violations, top offenders in New York can speed through school zones as much as they please. They pay a $50 fine per violation, but their cars aren't taken off the road, no matter how often they're fined. A city abatement program used to require some drivers with 15 or more school zone violations to take a two-hour safety course, but it expired in 2023. Even when it was active, it only required 1,600 drivers to take the course, out of the tens of thousands eligible. Beyond mandating a safety course, the city rarely took other action, only seizing cars from 12 top offenders during the few years the abatement program was active.

While the city doesn't impose serious consequences on top offenders, their driving has deadly consequences for pedestrians. In 2021, a driver with over 90 violations sped the wrong way up Gates Avenue in Fort Greene, killing a 3-month old baby. In 2024, another driver with nearly 30 violations struck and killed a pedestrian in Dyker Heights.
You can see how some top offenders rampantly speed through the city in this map. Unless officials enact policy to prevent this behavior, there's every reason to expect speeding patterns like these to persist in New York, putting the city's children and pedestrians of all kind in danger.