Miriam Yarimi should not have been driving at all.
But on Saturday, even with her license suspended, Ms. Yarimi, a 32-year-old professional wig maker and social media influencer, got behind the wheel of a blue Audi sedan. Her trip down Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn ended in three deaths: that of a 35-year-old woman and two of her children, ages 8 and 5.
Ms. Yarimi now faces charges that include criminally negligent homicide, reckless driving and speeding, the police said. A funeral was held Sunday for the woman, Natasha Saada, and her two daughters, Diana and Deborah Saada, who the police said were out walking when Ms. Yarimi’s car slammed into another vehicle before veering into their path.
According to Hows My Driving NY, a parking and camera violations database, Ms. Yarimi’s license plate, WIGM8KER, was associated with over $10,000 in fines, with almost 100 violations since August 2023. Those include 18 speed camera violations in school zones and at least five instances of failing to stop at a red light.
Most drivers are not reckless. According to New York City data, about 75 percent of vehicles that are issued speed camera violations receive no more than two. But the city has not yet established an effective way to handle the outliers — those habitual speeders and rule breakers whose behavior can be deadly.
Under the city’s Dangerous Vehicle Abatement Program, Ms. Yarimi’s vehicle could have been booted or impounded. But the initiative, which was enacted in 2020, lapsed three years later.
“The Adams administration allowed it to expire,” said Brad Lander, the city comptroller, who spearheaded the program when he was a City Council member. “They failed to implement it.” Mr. Lander, a Democrat, is running to unseat Mayor Eric Adams.
An evaluation of the abatement program, published by the city, found that between Nov. 1, 2021, and March 31, 2023, 1,605 vehicle owners received notices that they had accrued so many speeding and red light violations that it had become necessary for them to complete a safe driving course. During that time, 885 drivers took the course, 159 warrants were issued related to the program and 12 vehicles were seized.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Adams said that Mr. Lander was seeking political gain from a tragedy. At a news conference on Tuesday, the mayor touted his past efforts at bringing down the speed limit and increasing the number of red light cameras across the city, among other measures.
“And people who disregard laws needs to be held accountable,” Mr. Adams said.
Even if the abatement program had been in effect, Ms. Yarimi would just have been required to complete a safety course. Only after failing to complete it would her car have been eligible to be seized and impounded by the New York City sheriff.
Ms. Yarimi is currently being held at Bellevue Hospital for psychiatric evaluation, the police said. It was not immediately clear if she had a lawyer.
Ms. Saada’s 4-year-old son, who was also injured in the crash, was hospitalized in critical condition.
The city’s intractable problem with traffic violence is not new. In the 1930s, traffic fatalities were in the quadruple digits. In 2014, Mayor Bill de Blasio introduced a plan, called Vision Zero, aimed at reducing traffic deaths — and for the program’s first five years, the number of fatalities dropped.
But statistics show that deaths from car crashes have started rising again in recent years.
In 2024, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed Sammy’s Law in an effort to address the problem. The measure allows New York City to lower its speed limit to 20 miles per hour on almost every street. The legislation was named after Sammy Cohen Eckstein, a 12-year-old who died in 2013 after being hit by a van in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
On Monday, elected officials held a rally to back legislation that aims to stop habitual speeders.
The bill proposes the installation of speed limiters — mechanical devices that restrict how fast a vehicle can go — in the cars of drivers who repeatedly break the rules.
“Fines and suspensions of licenses aren’t enough to stop this extreme recklessness,” said Andrew Gounardes, the Democratic state senator who sponsored the proposal. “We need to physically force vehicles to drive the speed limit.”
Mr. Gounardes pointed out that Ms. Yarimi would have been a target of the bill.
Drivers would be required to have the technology installed after accumulating 11 or more points on their license in a 24-month period, or after receiving six speeding or red light tickets in a year.
The European Union has made speed limiters mandatory on new cars, but the United States does not seem likely to embrace the idea.
“Americans have an idea that cars equal personal freedom,” said Sarah Goodyear, co-host of a podcast called “The War on Cars” and co-author of the forthcoming book “Life After Cars.”
She noted that an average of 40,000 people in the country die in car crashes every year, but that Americans still argue over speeding tickets and protest against cameras. “If you reduce speed limits, it really does save lives and it really does reduce catastrophic injuries. But we are not willing to pay that price,” she said.
Michael Novakho, a Republican state assemblyman whose district includes the site of Saturday’s crash, told Streetsblog that he did not support legislation involving speed limiters, or even speed cameras themselves.
“Any driver can get much more than six,” Mr. Novakho, who attended Sunday’s funeral, said. “Sometimes you don’t see the camera. Sometimes there are situations where you have to speed up a little bit. To be honest with you, I’m against the cameras because we have too many.”
Street design can also affect how people drive. Ocean Parkway has a 25 m.p.h. speed limit but is still notoriously hazardous. The street is 210 feet wide and mostly straight, with up to six and sometimes seven lanes of traffic. Studies prove that wide, straight streets encourage speeding, and that narrower lanes can improve safety.
According to a report by News 12 Brooklyn, there were 129 crashes on Ocean Parkway last year, 86 of which resulted in injuries. Seventeen people — including a 2-month-old — were hospitalized after a crash on the parkway in October. (In 2018, Simcha Felder, then a state senator, not only opposed speed cameras on the road but proposed increasing its speed limit.)
Some experts believe that city streets should not be wide and straight like highways because urban environments have distinct, some would say opposing, safety needs.
On a highway, with cars maintaining constant speeds, safety results from more and wider lanes, as well as shoulders, no trees and fewer intersections, said Jeff Speck, a city planner and principal at Speck Dempsey, a firm specializing in urban design.
“In an urban environment, it’s the exact opposite,” he said. Many cities have found that the number of accidents can be reduced by removing lanes, adding chicanes for traffic calming and redesigning intersections for better visibility.
Mr. Lander, who attended Monday’s rally in support of speed limiters, acknowledged that they were not a cure-all. “There’s a point past which you should have a speed limiter, and a point past which your car should be impounded,” he said, “because you can’t operate your car like a weapon aimed at your neighbors.”
Wesley Parnell and Hank Sanders contributed reporting.