NEW YORK - The City Council is expected to approve a bill this week to crack down on reckless drivers who rack up red-light and speeding tickets.

The Reckless Driver Accountability Act is a three-year pilot program.

Drivers who get five red-light camera tickets or 15 speed-camera violations will be required to complete a defensive driving safety course.

Drivers who don't take that course may have their cars seized by the city.

The DOT projects that about 5,000 cars registered in the city are expected to face the added enforcement based on the current patterns.

It's been argued that the threshold for these violations are too high.

The city says the initial phase of the program needs to be manageable to ensure it works.

"In order to change drivers' behavior, those courses have to be small so people can really connect what they're doing to the risk of injuring or killing their neighbors," said City Councilman Brad Lander. "So we're going to run it on these 5,000. We're going to prove that it works, then we'll be able to expand iot as we see it saves lives."

The change comes as 114 pedestrians were killed last year.

In several cases, drivers were given eight or more total violations.