Why would a hospital association fight a law to allow DC to boot and tow dangerous drivers’ cars?

I felt a surge of joy last week when I spotted the DC Hospital Association among the list of witnesses for the Committee on Transportation and the Environment’s hearing on traffic safety and the Booting and Impoundment Reform Amendment Act. “At last,” I thought, “hospitals are speaking up for how damaging reckless driving is, for their patients, for their overworked staff, for public health as a whole.” How wrong I was.

The Booting and Impoundment Reform Amendment Act, introduced by Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh, who chairs the Committee on Transportation and the Environment, would allow Department of Public Works crews to enter privately owned parking garages and lots to extract cars stashed away by scofflaw motorists (along with other provisions, for example, to deviate from predetermined routes to perform enforcement). It makes sense if a goal is reducing physical harm to human lives from reckless driving (a rapidly growing crisis). Why should a privately owned garage, which is the privilege of those who can pay for it or those with regular jobs, offer a sanctuary that the public street does not?

Until Justin Palmer, the Vice President for Public Policy and External Affairs from the DC Hospital Association spoke up, I hadn’t considered hospital parking facilities to be a place where this would be of particular concern. But he (along with several other owners of private parking garages and representatives from the Apartment and Office Building Association of Metropolitan Washington, the Washington Parking Association, and DC Building Industry Association) was actually there to oppose the proposed legislation, and offered a variety of baffling defenses.

The wrong side of the table

The DC Hospital Association (DCHA; not to be confused with the DC Housing Authority) describes its mission as follows: “We are a unifying force working to advance hospitals and health systems in the District of Columbia by promoting policies and initiatives that strengthen our system of care, preserve access and promote better health outcomes for the patients and communities they serve.” (Emphasis added). But how do those worthwhile goals square with preventing enforcement of our traffic safety laws?

DCHA’s Palmer said that allowing District authorities to enter hospital parking garages to boot or tow vehicles with more than one unpaid infraction for more than 60 days would cause multiple unintended harms, including putting patient privacy at risk and exacerbating existing hospital staff shortages.

Need a moment? I did. Hospitals could, and should, be one of the clearest and strongest voices calling for reckless driving in DC to stop. But if they aren’t able to offer solutions, why would they stand in the way of one?

To allow scofflaw drivers to treat hospital garages as safe harbor is not a solution, but a tacit acceptance of hospital facilities as grounds where violence is tolerated so long as it’s not toward staff. DCHA’s contention that this policy would lead to negative interactions between parking garage staff and scofflaw drivers using their garages is a consideration for program design, not a reason to oppose the ability of law enforcement to simply take place.

Healthcare workforce issues are a huge problem. We just experienced a global pandemic, in which healthcare workers were routinely pushed past their tolerance, because our healthcare system isn’t financed or structured to respond appropriately.

As far as the healthcare worker shortage goes, Palmer offered no data about which strata of workers DCHA was most concerned about dissuading from working in DC. Parking lot staff alone? Does “the authorities might come tow my car after I got all those tickets, and if I can’t be sure that it’ll be safe inside my workplace garage, then stuff this job” figure into the known shortage of doctors, nurses, technicians, administrators, cleaners? Would you say that’s on the minds of maybe 0.01% of hospital employees? Even that seems like far too many unsafe drivers employed in healthcare settings.

Palmer also suggested that allowing access to hospital parking garages to boot and tow vehicles would particularly harm victims of domestic violence by making the details of their whereabouts subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) inquiries. But FOIA contains exemptions pertaining to information that constitutes a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, and some types of records can be specified for exemption. Victims of violence of all stripes should be protected by the state and by society. Yet it’s a far cry from that basic moral stance to suggest that allowing drivers to repeatedly put other human beings in danger will reliably protect those who have been abused by a partner, family member, or acquaintance.

Contrast this lens on health to comments from Dr. Bill Dietz, director of the Sumner M. Redstone Global Center for Prevention and Wellness at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University, who came to support the Booting and Impoundment Reform Act in the name of public health in his personal capacity. “[Infrastructure] changes must be coupled with robust enforcement of our traffic laws. Drivers who speed and run traffic lights are a threat to community safety. By strengthening enforcement, B24-949 will make our streets safer and more welcoming to nonmotorized users. This outcome will increase opportunities for physical activity and reduce pedestrian and rider injury and death. The net effect of these changes will foster active lifestyles among residents and mitigate the transportation sector’s contributions to climate change.”

The District’s current approach to traffic law enforcement is a mixed bag: On one hand, we have more automated traffic enforcement cameras than ever before, opening up a potentially reliable mechanism, not dependent on police officers, that more drivers might obey to avoid penalties. On the other, we have: more deaths and more injuries due to unsafe drivers, and more fake and expired license plates on the streets, which gives law-breaking drivers an easy way out of being called to account. DPW is actively trying to ramp up its enforcement program, and currently we can’t do anything about it if a boot-or-tow-eligible car is in a garage.

Thank hospital workers, but not like this

Hospital staff do incredible work to save and enhance lives, when all other aspects of our traffic safety system fail. For that, they should be compensated appropriately. They should have reasonable hours and a decent working environment, and the sincere and humble thanks of society.

But hospitals’ chief purpose in society is to aid those in medical need. Safe harbor for vehicles owned by people who have been repeatedly cited for operating them dangerously, putting human lives at unnecessary risk, should not be on their association’s lobby list.