Twitter Account Lets You Check Bad NYC Drivers' History

BROOKLYN, NY — If you've ever wondered if the driver of a car parked on the sidewalk does it every single day, a new Twitter account can help.

Safe streets advocate Brian Howald set up a "How's My Driving NY" Twitter account last week that let's users punch in a license plate and automatically checks through city records to pull up past violations. The idea came after a driver slammed into five pedestrians in Park Slope last month, killing Abigail Blumenstein, 4, and Joshua Lew, 1.

"As someone who walks and bikes across the city, I come across people doing illegal things, illegal driving and illegal parking, all the time," said Howald, a software engineer from Brooklyn Heights.

"I just wanted to make a tool that allowed this info to be accessible to someone standing on the street and just get some confirmation if does this person does that often, does this person habitually break the law?"

The city has an online a database of parking and camera violations that dates back several years, but it's not accessible on phones and it can be hard to navigate to find a specific car, said Howald.

He spent several days fixing up the data to make it easily searchable, then created a bot. Users send it license plates, it searches for previous violations then tweets the results to its followers. So far, the account has tweeted nearly 500 times and people started to regularly send it photos of cars parked at hydrants and bike lanes.

"I thought people would appreciate the ability to get some feedback, to get some information," said Howald. "I definitely thought there would be an appetite for it, but I really had no sense how much people were looking for this tool."

The idea was sparked after the tragic Park Slope crash when a group of activists was trying to figure out ways to use city data to highlight the need for improvements to streets to make them safer, said Howald.

On March 5, Dorothy Bruns, 44, was stopped at the red-light at Fifth Avenue and Ninth Street when she lost control of her 2016 Volvo S60 and slammed into pedestrians crossing the street, police said. The crash killed Abigail and Joshua and injured their mothers Lauren Lew and Ruthie Ann Blumenstein, a Tony-award winning actress who is pregnant. A 46-year-old man was also hurt.

Almost immediately afterwards, advocates found records showing Bruns' car had 12 violations issued to the license plate in the past two years, including four for running red-lights and four for speeding in school zones.

Officials previously said that since the violations were issued to the license plate it's impossible to tell who was behind the wheel, but Mayor Bill de Blasio later announced a push for a new law to close that loophole.

"You shouldn't be able to hide behind the fact that a car is registered to you but maybe someone else was driving," de Blasio said. "You have to take responsibility for your own vehicle."

A report by Comptroller Scott Stringer later found that Bruns wasn't alone. The study showed more than 121,000 drivers around the city got at least five violations from cameras in the past 26 months, with some pulling more than 50 in that time period.

Howald said he thinks the number is even higher because cameras don't catch enough violations, something he hopes his bot could help show with the data.

"I just think that the data that is available on parking violations really understates just how prevalent they are," said Howald.

"I think that we need to have a better sense of just what percentage of total violations we think are actually reported and then extrapolate from there. I think that number would astonish us all."

Image: Nicholas Rizzi/Patch