Cars in New York City are getting the yellow boot at substantial rates, data shows, as law enforcement remains strict on drivers who don’t pay their traffic tickets.
Any driver who fails to pay more than $350 or more in parking or traffic camera tickets within 100 days of their insurance are subject to booting, NYC’s Department of Finance says. In many cases, booted cars end up being towed, and if the owner doesn’t go to retrieve them, the city can auction them off.
According to city data, New Yorkers’ vehicles were booted 134,945 times in 2023, which is more than quadruple the number of times cars were immobilized in 2020, when just 31,379 vehicles were hooked up to the yellow anchor. The records from 2023 show more than 1,100 owners never retrieved their car after it was towed, leading to the city selling them at auctions. The data also shows another 8,274 vehicles were flagged as “runaways,” meaning people managed to remove the boots and drive away.
Ryan Lavis, a spokesperson for the DOF, told Gothamist in a statement that the high booting rates “are a result of the backlog of outstanding tickets that were issued during the pandemic, when penalties and booting were suspended.” He said that enforcement resumed in full in May of 2022.
“We encourage all New Yorkers to pay or dispute their outstanding parking tickets in a timely fashion to avoid adverse consequences, such as booting and other penalties,” Lavis said. “The Department of Finance provides ample warning to motorists before booting their cars and offers several ways for motorists to resolve their debts, including payment plans.”
Officials from the local Sheriff’s office or city marshals are often the ones who boot vehicles. Last year, the 31 city marshals pulled in record profits, earning a combined nearly $19.5 million net income, Gothamist reported.
Meanwhile, 2024 is on track to match or even surpass 2023’s record number of car booting, as there have been 74,975 vehicles booted across the city so far this year, with the amount of drivers’ fines owed totaling more than $118 million.
These raised numbers are also largely in part due to the city upping its automated enforcement with the deployment of cameras, which can issue tickets to drivers. In another recent move to tighten traffic and parking regulation, NYC also received permission to install more cameras meant to catch drivers who run red lights.
