Drivers who don’t pay their tickets are more likely to find their vehicles immobilized.

Booting is on the rise in New York City.

Drivers who don’t pay up for traffic tickets are more likely to have their cars ensnared than they have been at any point since before the pandemic all but shut down enforcement, according to city data.

New Yorkers’ vehicles were immobilized 134,945 times in 2023. That’s more than quadruple the number of boots clamped onto wheels throughout the city in 2020, when only 31,379 vehicles were captured by the devices’ metal fangs.

Drivers who fail to pay $350 or more in parking or traffic camera tickets within 100 days of their issuance are subject to booting.

Many booted vehicles get towed away. If their owners don’t retrieve them, the city can sell them at auction.

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  • @RubberElectronsEnglish
    4•23 days ago

    I forget where I’d read about it, some enterprising individual disassembled, then reassembled the boot off the vehicle, several times. Might be an urban legend though.

    • @5oap10116English
      6•23 days ago

      Also possibly urban legend, there was some story about a windshield suction cup “boot” or clamshell that you can get off by blasting your defroster on high heat and run a credit card along the seals. They also have GPS tracking on them with a Sim card that had unlimited data, which was then used for free internet.