Slowly STEERing Towards Improvements But Scofflaws Still Persist

For many years, out-of-state drivers could violate our traffic laws with near impunity. This was especially true for Virginia and Maryland drivers, since these states refuse to enter into reciprocity agreements with the District that includes camera enforcement. As a result, drivers from these states (who on a daily basis represent the majority of drivers on the street) can blast through red light and speed cameras knowing they can simply ignore any ticket they receive.

Yes, theoretically MPD officers can stop them and issue a ticket directly to the driver. But MPD has largely given up on that method of enforcement. And yes, the city can boot and tow a car under some circumstances. But that requires the city to find the car on the street and have it still be there when the boot and tow teams show up. It is a system where enforcement of the law is the exception, not the rule.

Last year the city passed the STEER Act, which attempted to address some of these flaws. For example it makes cars become more easily eligible for towing. Previously a car needed to have two or more tickets that were unpaid for at least 60 days before the car would be “boot eligible”. Under the STEER Act, the city introduces a point system whereby a car becomes immediately boot eligible if it racks up ten points in a six month period. For example, if it is ticketed for speeding 16 mph or faster (3 points) four times, then it is eligible. This is an improvement, no doubt, but, as I will explain, it still has some gaping holes.

Another aspect of the STEER Act is that it enables the DC Attorney General to sue out-of-state drivers for unpaid tickets. And this week the AG did just that when his office sued three Maryland drivers for over $95,000 combined. One of the drivers, Earl Curtis, is a particularly egregious scofflaw, as the Post explains:

Earl Curtis, 58, of District Heights, Maryland, was sentenced to three weekends in jail after running a red light and hitting Paisley Brodie with his Range Rover, fracturing her foot. But his vehicle has continued to get caught on traffic cameras. At the time of that incident, there were $19,000 in unpaid tickets from D.C. traffic cameras on the SUV. As of Friday, the fines topped $33,000, including six speed camera tickets in January alone — twice within a mile of where Curtis hit Paisley.

This is a good start, but it is merely a drop in the ocean considering the huge numbers of cars driving on our streets with outstanding unpaid tickets. And as of a few years ago, the city had all of two towing teams for the whole city. It has ten now, but it will take from now until the heat death of the universe for these crews to make a substantial dent in the numbers.

And this problem was brought home to me last week. In the photo above, you can see the aftermath of a car crash at 33rd and Q, just a block from my house on Feb. 17th. The white car had t-boned the red car, hard enough to cause the red car’s side air bags to deploy. Luckily no pedestrians were hit (although I understand the driver of the red car was taken to the hospital with minor injuries). I, of course, immediately noticed that the white car had temporary tags and the red car didn’t have tags at all. Upon closer inspection, the white car’s temporary tag expired in July 2023, if it was even real in the first place.

Typing the plate into the city’s ticket payment system resulted in the expected result. It owes almost $4,000 in tickets for violations you would absolutely expect someone who ends up t-boning another car would have:

Was the driver at fault for the crash on 33rd St.? I don’t know, especially given that the other driver was driving around with no plate at all. Maybe they both blew through the stop sign.

But what I do know is that the white car is absolutely boot eligible! Right now! But despite being involved in a violent collision and having so many outstanding tickets, the car was not immediately towed. It was not towed the next day either. In fact, after limping into a parking spot on Q St., it’s still there. Despite the fact that an MPD officer came to the scene and (presumably) wrote up a report, there is no requirement for the officer to call in a tow for boot eligible cars. They can do it, but there’s no requirement for them to even check the plates for tickets, as far as I can tell. I’ve followed up with MPD to see if a tow request was put in, but have not received an answer back yet.

So while the STEER Act has improved matters–and the gears of justice are beginning very slowly to turn–reckless drivers still act with near impunity. On 33rd St., the driver hit another car, with all its modern safety technology. And the other driver appears to have walked away with minor injuries, it easily could have been one of my neighbors or even family members that he struck. And there’d be no side impact air bag to save them in that case.