Wednesday’s Headlines: Slow ‘Em Down Edition

The assignment desk has a job for all members of the entire mainstream press today: Head to the corner of Seventh Avenue and 18th Street in what Brooklyn newcomers call Greenwood Heights to see for yourself the simplest and what should be the least-controversial way to rein in reckless drivers.

There, at 11:30 a.m. today, state Sen. Andrew Gounardes (D-Bay Ridge) will let reporters drive a car that has been fitted with a speed governor — the kind of device Gounardes wants to be installed inside the cars of drivers found guilty of 16 speed-camera tickets during any 12-month period.

That requirement would already be the law if Gounardes’s craven colleagues had passed the damn bill, also known as the “Stop Super Speeders Act” (or S4045 to us bill nerds), in the 2025 legislative session after watering down the original bill that required a speed limiter after six speeding or red-light camera tickets in a year.

The amended bill is such a no-brainer that it should even pass a brainless legislature; all it requires is for repeatedly and excessively reckless drivers to have their cars rendered unable to be driven recklessly. It doesn’t take away the car; it doesn’t suspend a license; it doesn’t raise insurance fees. It just makes the car itself less able to be a death machine.

Is it really such a heavy legislative lift to require the worst drivers to drive the speed limit? I mean, there’s already a speed limit, so is it too much to ask that drivers — I don’t know — adhere to it?

In any event, Gounardes will let reporters “test-drive the vehicle on a 10-minute route that includes the Prospect Expressway as well as local Brooklyn streets,” according to his office. Questions? Email Gounardes’s aide, Billy Richling.

And here’s a video of what the test-drive will look like:

In other news:

• Another outlet has cribbed from David Meyer’s seminal reporting last month on the Academy bus company’s effort to get an exemption from city idling law. (amNY)
• Speaking of seminal, our own Kevin Duggan was on the Outspoken Cyclist podcast, offering insights that only he can offer.
• As we’ve reported, casinos bring a host of problems. But the Times did a full dive on all of them … and the limited public benefits.
• We liked this Business Insider piece by a woman who moved to New York City from Florida (what the Post would call “a reverse Mamdani”) — and loved it!
• What happened to the bathroom at the Trader Joe’s?! (I Love The Upper West Side)
• A near-miss caught on a dashcam reminds us of the immortal question: Why are roads so unsafe in Staten Island … and why do Rock pols care so little? (SI Advance)
• Inveterate Brooklyn booster Roy Sloane had a long letter to the editor in the Red Hook Star-Revue that criticized an earlier story about the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway that quoted me and other anti-car activists — yet only the Sloane letter appears online, so I have no way of knowing what I allegedly said!
• Slowly but surely, all bus lane blockers will be caught. (amNY)
• A cyclist was badly injured in a New Jersey hit-and-run. (NY Post)
• Could it be that Washington, D.C. screwed up outdoor dining worse than New York? (Washingtonian)