Dollar Van Industry Faces Crackdown After Hit and Run
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City Council members yesterday vowed to crack down on the dollar van industry after the driver and several passengers in one such vehicle allegedly agreed among themselves not to “snitch” about a hit-and-run incident that left a Brooklyn grandmother of 10 with two broken legs and other injuries.
“They’re like wild animals running around this city,” Council Member Domenic Recchia, a Democrat of Brooklyn, said of the vans that operate in neighborhoods with little or no train and bus service. He and other council members announced a March 29 hearing to investigate the industry.
Jennifer Gibbons, a 56-year-old train cleaner, was left lying in the middle of Flatbush Avenue after being struck by a burgundy-colored dollar van on March 4. The driver allegedly walked over to look at Ms. Gibbons and then fled in his vehicle with several passengers in tow, according to Mr. Recchia and published reports.
“I am not a snitch,” someone claiming to be a passenger in the van that struck Ms. Gibbons wrote on Craigslist.org last week. The writer said the driver pleaded for silence, explaining that he had no license and feared being arrested.
Joining Mr. Recchia on the steps of City Hall yesterday in pleading for information about the incident were Ms. Gibbons’s son, daughter, and some of her Transportation Workers Union coworkers. The council’s Transportation Committee chairman, John Liu, a Democrat of Flushing, said Ms. Gibbons was “the latest example of how the public is in danger” due to the existence of dollar vans.
When asked how to identify properly licensed vans, Mr. Liu said, “That’s a good question” and offered no answer. Mr. Recchia suggested commuters avoid all dollar vans for now.
A spokesman for the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission said there are 279 licensed dollar vans in the city. The number of accidents involving dollar vans is kept by the state Department of Motor Vehicles. A DMV spokesman, Ken Brown, said that statistics on the number of accidents involving dollar vans were not available at press time.
Ms. Gibbons’s medical bills could have been paid for by a state-controlled fund had the driver been properly licensed, Mr. Recchia said. A state appellate court in the late 1990s struck down tougher regulation of the industry, a senior lawyer with the Washington D.C.-based Institute for Justice said.
