A Dearborn family living on Cleveland Street says reckless drivers have crashed into their property three separate times within a single year — the most recent leaving the husband in surgery and the family's car totaled on their own lawn. Neighbors up and down the block describe a similar pattern of speeding traffic cutting through their residential streets, and they want the city to do something about it.
Resident Ashely Sokolosky told CBS News Detroit that a driver crashed into her camper in September, and that a second incident followed just a couple of weeks later when her parked car was struck in front of her home. Her car, she said, ended up completely totaled on her lawn. When the station visited, Sokolosky and her husband were at the hospital — her mother said he was undergoing surgery after being injured by a reckless driver.
Neighbors describe the same stretch of road as increasingly unsafe. Adam Jezewski, who lives nearby, called the neighborhood scary and dangerous, pointing out how many children live on the block. Other homeowners told the station they worry about cars traveling too fast near kids playing close to the road.
Construction Squeezes Traffic Onto Side Streets
Not every resident sees the problem the same way. Longtime resident Nora Matt said construction has narrowed the road to one lane and cut down on the number of drivers passing through, and she added that she personally doesn't have an issue with the speed of drivers, since she figures they're just trying to get to work.
That construction is part of a larger pattern squeezing Dearborn's side streets. The Wayne County Department of Public Services carried out a major resurfacing and infrastructure project on West Outer Drive between Michigan Avenue and Southfield Freeway in August, restricting the road to one lane in each direction while crews repaired asphalt and storm structures, according to the City of Dearborn. The Michigan Department of Transportation's $353 million Restore I-94 project has compounded the squeeze, with extended ramp closures at the M-39/Southfield Freeway interchange running through mid-2027 across nearly 13 miles along the Dearborn-Detroit border, per the Restore I-94 construction coverage. Residents on streets like Cleveland have reported that detours from those major corridors push commuters into their neighborhoods.
City Points to Record Citations and New Patrol Unit
Dearborn Council President Michael Sareini said the city team takes traffic incidents extremely seriously and has been working around the clock, per the same CBS News Detroit report. He said the city's transparency task force has increased traffic citations by at least twofold and possibly threefold. That matches separate data reported by The Arab American News showing the Dearborn Police Department issued nearly 33,000 traffic citations in 2025 — the highest annual total in department history and a 30 percent jump over 2024, with the total surpassing comparably sized Michigan municipalities including Sterling Heights and Livonia, according to The Arab American News.
To back up that enforcement push, Dearborn police launched a dedicated Aggressive Driving Unit in June, equipped with unmarked Mustang Mach-E electric vehicles to covertly track and cite hazardous moving violators across the city. Chief Issa Shahin said the unit was created specifically in response to mounting community complaints about excessive speeds, according to the City of Dearborn.
Speed Humps, Driving School Crackdowns Round Out the Strategy
Sareini also pointed to physical changes already on the ground: the city has installed blinking stop lights and speed humps meant to encourage drivers to slow down, the CBS News Detroit report noted. That tracks with Mayor Abdullah Hammoud's April 2025 announcement that Dearborn allocated $1.5 million in public health grants to install 300 speed humps, 100 illuminated stop signs, and 60 radar speed signs across residential neighborhoods.
Beyond infrastructure, the city has also targeted driver training. Sareini said Dearborn partnered with the Secretary of State to shut down two driving schools that weren't adhering to policy. That effort follows the same pattern as the Michigan Department of State's November 2023 summary suspension of Dearborn-based Epic Driving Education LLC, after an investigation uncovered 6,643 violations, including issuing completion certificates without required testing, as detailed by the Michigan Department of State. In March 2025, Hammoud and Shahin had already sent joint warning letters to all local driving schools after officials found drivers aged 17 to 24 accounted for the majority of local traffic violations, CBS News Detroit reported separately.
Driving school oversight has become a regional flashpoint. The U.S. Department of Transportation announced an emergency shutdown of 110 commercial driver's license schools nationwide during an August press conference in Detroit targeting training fraud and English proficiency noncompliance, establishing Joint Task Force Crossroads of America to audit third-party testing sites across 40 states, according to ClickOnDetroit.
Under Michigan law, drivers caught in reckless behavior face real consequences. Standard reckless driving is a criminal misdemeanor under Michigan Compiled Laws Section 257.626, carrying up to 93 days in jail, a $500 fine, six license points, and an automatic 90-day license suspension, according to Shelton Legal Services. The charge can escalate to a felony carrying five to 15 years if it causes severe injury or death.
For now, city council members say the work continues. Dearborn's council is working to crack down on reckless driving and keep residents safe, Sareini said — a pledge that families like the Sokoloskys on Cleveland Street are watching closely as they rebuild after a year of crashes on their own front lawn.
