Nothing in your article actually says there is no legal recourse. It says Bowser asked VA and MD for help, but that VA and MD refused to do anything to help.

I'd like to see you back up your claims with some actual law or court precedent that says unpaid fines cannot be turned over to collections agencies, or that the traffic laws of one jurisdiction do not apply to drivers from another jurisdiction.

Serious serial offenses (like multiple armed carjackings and robberies) should automatically disqualify from being tried as a juvenile. The only possible leniency should be able to be realized conditionally via a plea deal based on information that actually results in arrest and conviction of the people he got the gun from, as well as the people who he was planning to deliver the stolen vehicles to. No arrests and convictions on those, no deal.

Your drivers license and vehicle registrations are the agreements you signed that make you liable and subject to traffic laws. It doesn't matter what jurisdiction. Just because you're licensed and registered in one state doesn't magically get you off the hook in a different state. Try convincing a state trooper who pulls you over in another state otherwise. The internet is chock full of hilarious videos of people who believed that and failed - particularly sovereign citizens.

Why not? If you're right, it seems quite bizarre that a private company can put a late payment on your credit report yet an official government agency collecting a legal and lawful fine cannot?

On another note, I do think they have legal recourse. I think they are just not exercising it effectively.

Collections agencies can and do ruin peoples' credit reports if they don't pay.

I don't know why they don't just turn the unpaid tickets over to a collection agency after 90 days or so.

The one thing people say about unpaid tickets is "what about the poor" - they could cross check owner against their filed taxes to see if their income is at some percentage of poverty rate, and if so, give them a discount on the ticket and give them a grace period / waive late charges. But either way, if not paid within a specified time, turn them over to collections. And if that doesn't work, and they still don't pay and have multiple outstanding tickets, then boot them / tow them.

I heard there's currently over $300 million in unpaid tickets. A small fraction of that could certainly go to pay for a few more traffic cops, boots and tow trucks.

Given the downvotes, it's amazing that some of you don't actually know what's going on but insist on being hardline opinionated on it anyhow.

Do you know for a fact that it was someone dumping the car in their own neighborhood park? Could have been a car used in a crime, they dumped it there with another car waiting.

Yes, partly - in an overwhelmingly white part of the country, the dumping would be happening in low-income white areas. But where the racism component starts to come in is that many of the low-income minority communities are the way they are because of a legacy of racism like redlining that kept minorities zoned into certain areas. But no, it's not as though racist rednecks are towing their cars a hundred miles just to dump them in a black neighborhood.

I think it ties into the broader topic of environmental justice, and it's not necessarily the locals doing the dumping. Often zoning laws are such that heavy industry and polluting businesses are zoned to be where low income people and minorities live, and it's often intentional, knowing they are not as empowered or have the legal means or political connections to be able to fight it. That's at one end of the spectrum. At the other is stuff like illegal dumping - likewise, people are likely to dump their waste in marginalized neighborhoods where they think they are more able to get away with it.

Most likely to make friends if you actually have something in common. Go to meetups and groups of special interest, as opposed to generic meetups.

And what if those cars are noisy? Send them a ticket, which will get ignored along with the other $1500 in tickets the car probably already has? If Council wants any credibility, they need to actually start enforcing the laws, booting them and/or towing them and so on.

And don't try to play the "oh, but it's disproportionately poor black people" card - anyone who can afford to pay $60k for a decked-out Challenger, Hellcat or Charger damn well can afford to pay their speeding and red light tickets too. And even if you're poor, that's still not an excuse to speed, run red lights and otherwise drive like a maniac to rack yourself up those tickets.

It's sad and pathetic that we see more vehicular enforcement from Secret Service and Park Police and other agencies than we do from MPD. https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/secret-service-and-guns-drawn-couple-arrested-during-happy-hour-at-joes-in-dc/3257195/

Do any of these orgs give donation receipts?

It's not "car owners" in general. It's car owners who behave badly - car owners who want to speed through residential neighborhoods and busy commercial districts, who want to run red lights and stop signs, who don't use their blinkers, who cut people off, who make illegal turns, who drive aggressively or otherwise drive badly, who double park or otherwise park illegally, who don't pay any of their bills and fines, who are the cause of congestion, and so on. And I'd wager a big percentage of the drivers are just doing what they do as creatures of habit. I'd wager a big percentage of them never actually tried alternatives, like park and ride on metro, didn't try to get their workplace to do telework, or anything else.

I think it's less about ego/pride/etc. I see far too many crossing the street with their heads down on their phones. I think a lot of people in DC are mentally pre-occupied with other things rather than caring about what others are doing. The part of it that bothers me the most is that many seem to lack situational awareness.

Working downtown, I see motorcades on a pretty regular basis. It was pretty striking to see the shift from people lining the streets, cheering and taking pictures when an Obama motorcade came through, versus people flipping the bird when a Trump motorcade came through.

Though I have to say the one I was most thrilled to see recently was the motorcade taking Zelenskyy to the Capitol.

It's no "stance." It's being assertive. I've been living and working in the DMV for almost 20 years, and have put a shit ton of miles on many cars on these streets - and in my experience, a blinker might get acknowledged by like 10% of the drivers in the DMV, tops. The remainder will either ignore you and not let you in, or intentionally speed up and cut you off. That's just a fact. And that's why drivers like me end up having to be very pro-active and not even giving them the chance to speed up and cut me off. My behavior is conditioned by the 90% of selfish drivers in the DMV. If you want to yell at someone for being selfish you can start with them, because I'm not interested in hearing it.

You definitely aren't driving the same DC roads that I do. I see people cutting others off ALL THE TIME. Especially the Uber drivers, many of whom also never use their blinkers.

Tonight while in a roundabout, I put my blinker on in advance of my exit, had plenty of room to move over, but this crazed lady speeds up and goes around me - on the right, swerving into the street I was clearly signaling that I was turning on to, cutting me off, and then swerves back into the roundabout. She could have just driven like a normal human, waited like 2 seconds for me to exit, exactly like my blinker said I was going to, and I would have been completely out of her way, no need for crazy antics, cutting me off and going around me on the totally wrong side.

I went from being a conscientious driver to "my blinker isn't asking your permission, it's doing you the courtesy of letting you know I intend to come over" to just stopping putting blinkers on outright when trying to change lanes because asshole drivers will speed up, close the space that you were trying to get into if they see you trying. It's all a product of the behavior of everyone else's asshole driving styles. I'll think about using my blinkers again when the rest of you stop trying to cut people off when they need to change lanes.

I put my blinker on if turning at an intersection. I used to put it on when changing lanes, but after having moved to DC I stopped doing it because the second someone sees you trying to change lanes, they speed up to not let you in. DMV drivers are real a-holes. And, it's not just the "DC drivers" - the MD and VA drivers are especially guilty because most of them are commuters just trying to aggressively blast their way through traffic as quickly as they possibly can.

They also need to get enforcement deals in place with Maryland and Virginia. I don't even buy that it's about poverty. If someone's resourceful enough to be able to recurrently get an authentic looking, weather-proof temp tag then they should also be resourceful enough to get a real one. I think it's more about knowing it's easy to skirt the laws in DC and knowing you can get away with all kinds of shit in DC and not face any consequences. Just look at all of the carjackings as yet another example. That idea of zero meaningful consequences needs to end.

And quite a few of them were dumped on Washington DC from other communities with a one way bus ticket.