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Police can't stop sideshows. Solution: Make the streets more annoying
- anonexpat 2y agoSomehow we always end up punishing the masses for the sins of the few.
- bradknowles 2y agoIt’s called “The tragedy of the commons”.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoI don’t think that applies in this case. You have trivially provable crimes, easily resolved by making a few examples getting harsh punishment. We have cameras, drones, police departments equipped with military gear, and software to monitor and record electronic communications. The only thing missing is political will to make it a priority.
- krapp 2y agoYes it's unfortunate no one wants to live in a police state.
- brentPeddler 2y ago[dead]
- noodlesUK 2y agoYou don't even need to make the punishment especially harsh. What helps is to increase the likelihood you will actually get caught and face any consequence. It would be much better to reliably confiscate the cars of the people doing this than to randomly send a very small proportion of them to prison.
- trevyn 2y agoThis is why I left the US. It’s actually way better out here.
- AndrewKemendo 2y agoWhere? I think we’re all looking for an exit at this point
- HaZeust 2y agoNot GP; but Scandinavia. I sadly had to give up my Norway residence attempt (by far the most appealing) for my current process in getting an Iceland residence permit, and ALL the times I've gone for tourism and culture - even for weeks at a time - it's not even close how much better it is. It has a culture you WANT to assimilate into, very high-trust and homogenous, almost all nation's pasts in Scandinavia are smooth enough to not disrupt modern society, very well-developed, tons of job opportunities in tech (and that's if you don't want to work remote), their structuration theory in politics is as reasonable as it is fair, lower populations, the list goes on.
- Moldoteck 2y agoIt depends how you look at it. Lots of car drivers do break the law, redesigning the street to discourage driving with high speed is a good thing when you care about the safety of the ppl. Not just to stop those with high speed, but also to reduce the avg speed to give drivers more time to react. In this sense, if you put people safety as top concern, you help the masses(all the ppl are pedestrians at some point) by enforcing safe driving for the few that do drive with proper street design
- nicbou 2y agoThis website has done an amazing job of visually explaining what the solution is. The image comparisons are useful and the drone videos are super crisp. It's really impressive.
- pshirshov 2y agoRoundabouts
- Perenti 2y agoI lived backing onto a roundabout for 10 years. Hoons would do massive donuts at speed, at all hours, often spearing off the road. One neighbour had cars through his fence twice, across from him had a retaining wall that took a few cars out. Opposite him there was a drop to some gated units, a car came through the roof of one of them. Roundabouts are brilliant, but they don't stop maniac drivers showing off.
- pshirshov 2y agoThey don't stop completely but definitely reduce the amount of shitheads to almost zero. In Ireland idiots making donuts prefer supermarket parkings. And we are a country of roundabout dominance.
- jiehong 2y agoThere are some non round roundabouts. Like mini peanut shaped roundabouts[1]. [1]: http://www.swcivil.com.au/images/peanut-roundabout-warrnambool1534x1023.jpg http://www.swcivil.com.au/images/peanut-roundabout-warrnambo...
- meowster 2y ago> but they don't stop maniac drivers showing off. but they probably don't increase maniac drivers showing off either. In my neighborhood, some a**.... did donuts in a regular four-way stop intersection. In a previous neighborhood, another a**.... burned rubber on a regular straigh road.
- TheJoeMan 2y agoHere in Florida we have the Bithlo drag race track. They have events where locals can race their own cars, and sometimes ones where you can compete against a souped up police car that the local department races. I think this goes a long way towards reducing illegal street races by providing a legal outlet. I wonder if something similar would help here? There’s a car culture of meeting at an empty paved area and gathering around and doing donuts, perhaps there could be a designated “public park” for this?
- ryaneager 2y agoSonoma Raceway is about an hour north of the city and has similar drag racing events.
- eleveriven 2y agoMaybe it can potentially reduce illegal activities
- HaZeust 2y agoThese people aren't the most intelligent or participatory in civilization; they like doing it at 4-way intersection BECAUSE it disrupts. At a morning/afternoon car show (generally the only kinds you should go to, evening ones are bad news) where I brought my v8 camaro, I was invited to my first sideshow and to drive in the convoy. Went, saw the malarkey, left.
- mrandish 2y ago> they like doing it at 4-way intersection BECAUSE it disrupts. I agree there are (at least) two large segments of the attending crowds, those looking for auto-sport type activities and those you describe who are basically looking for large-crowd street events in their urban area and view an event being unofficial, illegal and/or disruptive as making it even more appealing and 'authentic'. I'm more in the first group and having the kind of street racing-centric and adjacent events GP describes available locally would appeal to me and be a real alternative. Conversely, I think the second segment of the crowd are pretty much going to "do spontaneous large-crowd things" in these areas even if authorities intentionally degrade urban intersections to be so annoying that "sideshows" (as currently practiced) cease. The second type of crowd will just morph what they do in that area into something else that's suitably unofficial, illegal and/or disruptive. Probably nothing short of much wider-scale urban reform than just impeding some intersections, is going to meaningfully change that. To be clear, my point is only that something like GP's proposed alternative might actually meet an unmet need for one segment of the participants with a workable substitute, while for the other segment, what the authorities are currently doing has little chance of really solving anything other than pushing today's specific disruptive activity into a different disruptive activity tomorrow (while further degrading urban intersections all the time). I take no position on what (if any) viable solutions might exist to really address the problem with the second segment because it's a symptom of much larger systemic issues. However, I'm fairly confident what authorities are doing now does nothing to address the autosport need AND does nothing to fundamentally address the root causes of illegal underground urban street rally/protests.
- fargle 2y agoor, instead of installing basically speed bumps in all the intersections, they could show up and arrest the participants for misdemeanors and felonies that are clearly visible on video, actually book them into jail with serious bail. impound the cars as evidence and don't give them back unless they prevail at trial. if the political system isn't interested in enforcing, of all things, these kind of laws, speed bumps aren't going to help.
- brudgers 2y agoArrests require a willingness to use lethal force. That may not seem disproportionate to you. It does to me.
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoGiven that cars driven unsafely can kill people? But that's hypothetical. Are there cases of people getting killed by this activity? That would affect the trade-off.
- david-gpu 2y ago> Are there cases of people getting killed by this activity? Multiple cases in Toronto throughout the years. Just google and you will find multiple examples this year alone.
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoWell then, my heart does not bleed for the possible need for lethal force in the process of arresting these people.
- david-gpu 2y agoIn Toronto the police has a standing policy not to chase street racers. Instead, they track them remotely and arrest them once they get out of the vehicle. These street racers are putting the general public at risk, and have indeed killed several people in the past few years.
- mystified5016 2y agoCincinnati has been installing these truly egregious speed bumps everywhere. They're the kind with a raised edge and are unsafe to drive over at 15mph, slapped in a 35mph zone. It's made things even less safe. Instead of everyone moving at a consistent (if high) speed, people still drive the same speed and just slam on the brakes to get over the speed bump, accelerate back to speed, slam on the brakes for the next bump. I've started to reroute my commute around these dangerous obstacles in the road, as have many others. Now we have a net increase in travel time, CO2 emitted, and the roads are more dangerous than ever. Less-maintained backroads are taking more traffic than normal causing increased wear. Truly the worst of all possible options.
- jmugan 2y agoSounds bad for the planet too, all that wasted momentum.
- Ekaros 2y agoSoon we will only have EVs with regenerative breaks so everything is fine. Apart from reality that at these deacceleration rates mechanical breaks get used... So it is all going to spend more energy and thus propagate climate change, which will kill people...
- Moldoteck 2y agoYou say less safe, but do you actually have the stats regarding pedestrian deaths dynamic in those areas?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- kylehotchkiss 2y agoWhat?? Get plates, impound cars. This seems to be solvable without ruining roads for everybody else
- sagarm 2y agoStolen cars, stolen plates, no plates. You're coming at this from the perspective of a law-follower.
- kylehotchkiss 2y agoI sure am! Didn't realize how much the crimes stacked up
- dangus 2y agoNY Times article on the lack of traffic enforcement since the pandemic: https://archive.is/2024.07.30-012727/https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/07/29/upshot/traffic-enforcement-dwindled.html https://archive.is/2024.07.30-012727/https://www.nytimes.com... I think we shouldn’t take cops’ word for it that they can’t enforce the law. In my opinion they’re too lazy and have no incentive to do anything besides collect easy revenue from everyday drivers who are more docile. I think on top of this there need to be more types of vehicles and vehicle modifications that are just straight up illegal to own or sell at all. At this point the rotten apples in the car and motorcycle community have spoiled the bunch. It shouldn’t be legal to sell vehicles that allow you to burn rubber at all. In no sane world should a Dodge Challenger with almost a thousand horsepower from the dealership be street legal. It shouldn’t be legal to purchase an extra loud performance muffler unless it can be locked out from being loud outside of a closed track. In the era of computer traction control and accident avoidance, driving a car should be like driving an AirBus where the vehicle prevents the operator from performing dangerous maneuvers. I do think that the built environment should be more conducive to save driving, but when you start installing hostile architecture similar to homeless or skateboarder deterrents you’re fighting the symptom instead of the cause.
- noodlesUK 2y agoAll these interventions look like they are in fairly sizeable 4 way intersections. It obviously isn't possible to replace all of them, but I think that it would make sense to lay streets out with roundabouts and avoiding 4 way junctions as the UK and various EU countries do, at least for new developments. You can't do doughnuts in narrower streets without intersections. I also think that many of these people are basically broadcasting their identity online whilst committing various reckless driving crimes. You don't necessarily need to show up and intervene at all of them in real time, but if the recent riots across the pond have shown anything, it's that it's fairly easy for the police to knock on your door in the morning and arrest you for misbehaviour the night before.
- themadturk 2y agoYou're right, and roundabouts are being implemented in the US (at least in my region, the Seattle suburbs) as budgets and new construction allow. I rather like them.
- even_639765 2y agoIf there aren't large intersections, they'll go to parking lots, which is what they do in my town. If the 3rd time you're caught at one of these, you're taking the bus for the next two years, that would solve the problem pretty quickly, leveraging the same viral social media that spread the problem so quickly. Since the events around George Floyd, the police in some jurisdictions have adopted a hands- off, do not interfere policy to "low level" offenses At some point in the future, cities may reconsider those decisions.
- nullc 2y agoAh. West Coast passive aggressiveness, ... can't arrest the people doing crimes, that would be too overt. Instead we need to make the road less safe so that they'll kill themselves and bystanders if they continue their activity, with a bonus of making the roads more irritating for everyone.
- david-gpu 2y agoBut if we make it harder for motor vehicles to go over the speed limit, then we would also reduce the number of pedestrian and cyclist deaths as well. And it would mildly inconvenience those motorists who will gladly risk people outside their vehicle in order to save a few seconds. Is that the sort of tradeoff we want?
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoInstead of enforcing the law against criminals, they propose to use criminality as a way to expand the war on cars. As a society, we need to stop the practice of punishing the masses for the sins of a few.