A DC boot by Kendrick Hang licensed under Creative Commons.

The idea behind traffic enforcement has a simple logic. When a driver is caught breaking the law — for instance, by running a red light at the site of a red light camera — they get a ticket. The threat of paying that fine then incentivizes that driver, as well as other drivers who know ticketing is taking place, to follow the law.

But what happens when some drivers aren’t paying those fines? A DC Council roundtable Monday focused on that question.

DC’s Department of Public Works can boot drivers when they have two or more parking or Automated Traffic Enforcement (ATE) tickets that are more than 60 days old. The traffic cameras fine drivers for moving violations: speeding and running red lights or stop signs.

Advocates — including my colleagues on the policy side of GGWash (per our editorial policy, they were not involved in the publication of this article) — have pushed for more emphasis on traffic cameras to enforce safety laws while preventing encounters with police that can prove dangerous for Black and brown drivers. (A note: GGWash policy manager Alex Baca testified at Monday’s roundtable.)

But even as cameras are becoming an increasingly important enforcement tool, questions remain about how well they are reining in dangerous drivers if many of them are able to simply ignore tickets.

According to Councilmember Mary Cheh, chair of the DC Council’s Committee on Transportation and the Environment, almost 550,000 vehicles across DC, Maryland, and Virginia are currently boot-eligible, many for moving violations. About 75,000 of those vehicles were ticketed for going 21 mph over the speed limit; 150,000 ran red lights; and 50,000 ran stop signs.

A small fraction of those vehicles are racking up dozens upon dozens of violations. DPW told Cheh that there are more than 3,000 vehicles with more than 20 outstanding ATE tickets; 500 with more than 40 violations; and even a Virginia driver with more than 180 violations.

According to Cheh, it’s not clear whether the cars racking up these tickets are disproportionately responsible for the deaths and injuries that DC’s Vision Zero program has been trying in vain to reduce because police don’t link that data. But anecdotally, drivers with outstanding tickets have been involved in incidents like the crash that injured a father and his two young daughters in Congress Heights on Walk to School Day in October.

What is clear, however, is that of those thousands of cars with outstanding tickets, only a small fraction are being booted, and plenty have been spotted on DC streets. At Monday’s roundtable, councilmembers questioned DPW Director Christine Davis and Deputy Mayor for Operations and Infrastructure Lucinda Babers, to ask what’s going wrong.

Booting and towing and points, oh my!

One major reason tickets aren’t getting enforced is capacity: According to DPW’s Davis, DC currently has just four people on its booting crew, and they’re only able to boot about 50 cars per day. To boot every currently eligible vehicle at that rate would take 25 years.

But even with more enforcement on the streets, many drivers would still be able to avoid the boot. That’s because DC can’t boot or tow cars parked on private property — for instance, in a garage or driveway. And they can’t stop cars while they’re driving either. A car that never parks on a DC public street might never be caught.

If booting and towing crews don’t catch a car, the next way DC can enforce tickets is its “Clean Hands” law, which allows the District to withhold most licenses and permits if the applicant owes DC more than $100.

That law used to allow DC to suspend drivers licenses too, but concerns about equity led officials to end that practice, to prevent low-income and Black residents from disproportionately having their means of travel taken away (it’s worth noting that for frequent speeders who can afford to pay their camera tickets, the slate is wiped clean).

Though suspensions are gone, drivers with outstanding tickets still can’t renew their licenses under the law, a practice nonprofit Tsedek DC has said “penalizes poverty” and disproportionately affects Black residents.

Still, if a driver doesn’t need a permit or license renewal, they can go a long time without being compelled to pay their tickets. At Monday’s hearing, Councilmember Christine Henderson argued that DC needs another method of enforcement.

One idea, also raised by GGWash’s Baca, is adding points to licenses, much as a speeding ticket from a police officer might do. Currently, camera tickets don’t result in points — as officials pointed out Monday, that’s in large part because cameras can’t identify the driver, and some households may have multiple drivers using one car.

Instead, speed camera tickets are treated the same way as traffic tickets. Henderson argued that should change.

“I think parking tickets and tickets for ATE are different, in my opinion, especially over a certain speed limit,” she said. “And perhaps we need to start viewing the enforcement around that differently as well.”

Libby Solomon was a writer/editor and Managing Editor for GGWash from 2020 to 2022. She was previously a reporter for the Baltimore Sun covering the Baltimore suburbs and a writer for Johns Hopkins University’s Centers for Civic Impact.