Takeovers are perhaps the most chaotic and shameful element of modern car culture. Masses swarm public intersections as drivers stunt for the crowds, while disaster is seldom far away. This past weekend, a takeover in LA took things to a new level, with two cars ending up charred to a crisp.
As reported by NBC LA, the incident occurred early Saturday morning near 18th and Main Street. Fire crews were called at approximately 3 a.m. to respond to burning cars in the middle of the intersection.
News crews captured the inferno, with multiple explosions emanating from the two burning husks. Per the news channel, “Witnesses said dozens of cars were seen in the area before the fire, many being driven recklessly as people set off fireworks” at the side show, which reportedly featured dozens of cars and hundreds of spectators (per KTLA). An LAPD spokesperson told ABC 7 that the vehicles were deliberately torched, rather than accidentally ignited.
As shown in the video above, drivers were trying to wind their way around the burning cars in the intersection before authorities were able to clear the area and put out the flames. No injuries were reported as a result of the takeover or the subsequent blaze. Despite the fracas, authorities did not make any arrests on the scene as the crowd scattered.
Los Angeles law enforcement currently runs a task force dedicated to tackling street racing and related issues, but it’s not all-powerful. Speaking to KCAL News, LA City Councilmember Kevin de León noted that more had to be done to counter takeovers. “We actually have reduced the number of street takeovers in LA… but nonetheless, it has not completely come to a halt,” he explained.
Takeovers are dumb even when they don’t end with torched cars blocking the road. To try to counter these chaotic events, some jurisdictions are implementing new and harsher penalties for those involved. Florida is among the states leading the charge in this area.
Vehicles on fire at a street takeover in South LA. 18th/Main. Video from the Citizen App. pic.twitter.com/f2xcauvhqS
— Los Angeles Scanner (@LosAngeles_Scan) June 29, 2024
As the Miami-Dade Police notes in the tweet below, from July 1st, participating in a “coordinated street takeover” involving 10 or more vehicles will get you charged with a felony, along with a fine from $2,500 to $4,000. Obstructing emergency vehicles at a takeover or street race will also attract a felony charge, with a four-year loss of license for second or subsequent violations. These felony violations also come with the threat of vehicle seizure. Even spectating a sideshow could get you into trouble, though at a lower degree. You’ll receive a noncriminal traffic infraction and a $400 fine.
On July 1st, 2024, there will be changes to the law regarding “street takeovers”.
The safety of our residents and visitors is our top priority. Street Takeovers are not only illegal, but a danger to our community. We will have a ZERO tolerance approach to this reckless behavior… pic.twitter.com/IWW8Xq6EYU
— Miami-Dade Police (@MiamiDadePD) June 26, 2024
The state of California has also pursued harsher laws against street racing and takeovers. Most recently, Assembly Bill 74 was introduced last year in an attempt to crack down on such behavior. The proposed bill would mandate that anyone caught racing or attending such events would have their license suspended for anywhere from 90 days to 6 months. It would also allow for impounding vehicles involved in such activities. However, the bill failed to enter force after hearings earlier this year.
While a dedicated minority of car people continue to engage in takeovers, they’re generally considered a dangerous menace by the broader public [Ed Note: And honestly, by most car enthusiasts. We don’t claim this fringe group as part of our car community. -DT]. Those that end with burning vehicles blocking intersections are only more likely to draw condemnation and calls for more to be done. If other states like Florida find a proven way to halt the chaos, expect Californians to demand the same in short order.
Image credits: NBC LA via YouTube screenshot
And this is why every NFS ever says don’t do that kinda crap.
Catch the perps. Dispose of them. Crush the cars.
They never had these problems when Ponch and Jon were on the streets.
Ba-ba-ba-dum-bah…!
And any problems they did have could be resolved in 60 minutes!
Criminalizing this is exactly what they want – more attention, media coverage tut-tutting and hand wringing of the general public.
Absolutely this will be used to demonize minorities and enable police overreach. Innocent bystanders will be murdered by cops, protests will ensue, the American news channels will rejoice at their increased viewership by angry old white people, and absolutely nothing will change.
Agreed
If Brian hadn’t thrown in with the criminals who later became super spies, this never would have happened.
No, Cerberus, you’re not going to engage with this.
Good grief. Get ready for a $15 million line item on the police budget for the “Street Takeover REsponse and Education Task-force.” (Get it? It spells STREET! Money please!) They’re probably gonna arrest like a dozen people per year. You could probably just pay everyone involved not to do it and come out ahead. Luckily, I have a solution that will never involve the agony of a council meeting.
Every car has a device like a TV remote resting on the dashboard, but it only has two big buttons: + and -. When you point it at any other car on the road and click, their maximum speed will increase or decrease by one mph, maybe for 30 minutes or some other length of time. So if you do something egregious out in the middle of nowhere – no harm, no foul. Do it in traffic, and have fun going home in limp mode.
If that doesn’t work, just hand out caltrops to business owners at troubled intersections.
Traffic cameras at intersections, dipshit kids streaming it live, and the Defunded Police could not even manage to stop one person. Sad.
This is such stupidity. But I’m one of those that thinks donking or Carolina squats are dumb, not to mention stancing. But I guess I’m just old and think that cars can be awesomely cool without resorting to breaking them…
Yep, they steal the cars they burn, or if you’re unlucky/dumb enough to bring your car to one of these events it might get set on fire by the mob for the lolz.
We did street take-overs when I was in high school. Back then everyone called it cruising. However, we took over the street, and traffic moved at a snails pace. Not on a public street per say. This was a big giant loop around a shopping mall. After a few years, police setup ticket areas. If you passed that point more than 5 times, they ticketed you with criminal trespassing.
I think kids today are taking it up a notch just like we did after our parents.
I don’t agree with their behavior but I don’t think destroying their lives for doing it a thing we need to do.
Maybe come up with something similar to the street drags and doing it on a real track against the police?
I mean, let’s be honest, the number of currently Derelict malls with huge parking lots is still going up. it might be a decent Idea to actually convert the lots to a kids cruising loop these days.
They could even put up some obstacles in the interior parking spots for the Jeep People to actually Mall Crawl at this point.
As a Jeep owner, I would unashamedly love that!
Wasn’t there a city that allowed some “side shows” under police presence to let the kids blow off some steam in a controlled environment? That seemed like a good idea.
Detroit, not sure what its up to these days.
Oh, Detroit? Its great.
Catch them. Destroy their lives. Actions have consequences.
Given that these cars are all probably stanced to oblivion, a few well-placed speed bumps in key intersections ought to put a stop to this one.
Can we just go back to those Jackass movies to manage the idiot population size?
I think tougher enforcement is part of the solution, but I also think that we’d do well to provide kids with a safe place to learn to drift their cars and to show off their skills to their peers. Used to be that outlaw drag races were the big thing for kids to attend. They still happen, of course, but there are drag strips open for those who want to do that sort of thing in a safer and more controlled environment. I wouldn’t be surprised if such places exist for drifting, but I’ve never heard of any around here.
I..have to disagree. Your assertion reminds me of 50’s hot rod movies in which “the kids just want a safe place to race”.
A Safe Sanctioned Space, though, flys in the face of what makes these things attractive. It’s the chaos..the thrill of the illegal..the empowerment that comes from “taking over the street”.
Why are they doing it? For the ‘Gram, or whatever platform it is today.
Certainly, there are some who only want to cause chaos, and they’re not going to be helped by this. But I am pretty sure there are some who just like the fun that comes with drifting your car and showing off your skills. For those kids, a place where they can do all that and not risk losing their cars (which is what happens here if you’re caught at a sideshow) would be a good option.
Nothing wrong with an option..but I, for one, would not be surprised if such an option did nothing to curtail street shows.
Sure. Its called an Xbox. There they can show off all their anti social GTA skills.
They don’t want places to drive. The cars are just a tool that could be replaced by any other tool. What they want is release via hedonism. Not hedonism in the modern “dang ‘ole devil worshippin’ rabble rousers” sense, but the classical sense of it being a safety valve before internal repression turns outward. It’s pretty damn alarming that there’s so much pressure built up that things like this are the outlet, but we saw the same things happening in the 1930s and the 1970s with rum running and street gangs. People aren’t looking at why they’d get this volatile, they’re just clamoring to annihilate the resulting behaviour. It’s treating the lesions and ignoring the louse, if you will.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that takeovers are not ‘car culture’ at all, but hooligan culture. Cars happen to be the particular vehicle (as it were) for hooliganism.
I came here to say this – Thank you.
obviously, the solution to street takeovers is to ban kei cars.
and mandate ADAS you can’t shut off
Oh just wait till the car records wheelspin, yaw, G-forces, speeding, etc as well of multiple video angles of the interior while it’s calling the police itself.
Often this gets framed as an urban phenomenon. Here in rural Maine, the youth have gotten really into these this summer. Which, ain’t shit else for them to do, so make sense. But it’s not like intersections grow on trees here. So, you get a group of youth. Which it being the oldest state in America, is not numerous. And they ain’t given up the truck for like a 350z or Mustang or something more serviceable for the job. So, its a bunch of OBS Rams, and Sliverados. Often with the exhaust cut off before the cat, and running on about 7 1/2 cylinders. So, you get like 12 kids out at an intersection in the middle of the forest at 10 p.m. doing positraction donuts in a rotted out truck that hasn’t passed inspection in three years. Outside of the urine-trail of a one wheel peels being literally every where, hasn’t exactly been one top of the problem list. It ain’t like they’re impeding traffic. But now you got the local law enforcement cracking down on some local group of hoodlums and miscreants calling themselves “Slow Boyz”.
I grew up in a rural area, and we didn’t have this sort of thing. We had winding rural county roads through the woods. This was the late 90s and the sorts of cars we high schoolers could afford weren’t all that powerful, so we used to basically have the car with the higher power-to-weight ratio start in front, and if they ended up pulling away without the other car catching up, they won. If the slower accelerating car kept up the whole way by catching up and staying right behind the faster car, the slower car won.
Certainly wasn’t safe, but these were tertiary or quaternary roads that rarely, if ever saw any traffic, and due to the ars we were driving, we rarely even hit 80mph on long straights, and there were very few of those.
I won a lot despite not having a ton of horsepower, just because I bothered to fit wider wheels and tires, a slight lowering, and a Weber carburetor, header, and a free-flowing exhaust.
I grew up in rural Michigan and would mostly agree with your comment. Shenanigans in town were rare because … why risk getting arrested when you’re never more than a 1/2 mile from the edge of town?
But even though it was a poor town and most of us drove shitboxes, kids still managed to get killed every year. Racing side-by-side on 2-lane roads, playing chicken, and just generally being morons at high speed. Even a shitbox can be dangerous when it’s driven by a 16-year-old idiot.
We were doing the hooliganism thing 60 years ago. Bush parties, booze, driving cars and bikes like idiots in tge city and country. A few got killed and injured. Most of us survived our youthful idiocracy. This seems to have gone up a few notches from what we were doing.
“Here in rural Maine, the youth have gotten really into these this summer. Which, ain’t shit else for them to do, so make sense.”
Why did those youths stop doing whatever it was that kept them busy before? Did farmers pur razorwire around the sheep pens or something?
Mainly cause the youth will get into a trend they see on TikTok or whatever like three years too late and then move on. Last summer it was being Wheelie Kids. They seem to be pretty over that now, probably because they crashed all their dirt bikes one to many times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-4lk2-UA_I
Super small town Iowa was so bad as far as police presence that often circle track races around town Squares would happen and then disperse when the scanners indicated the police a town over were on the way.
Yeah, on a Thursday night you’re looking at maybe four officers on shift in our county which is only slightly smaller than Rhode Island. You’ll get town cops coming for emergencies, but if you’re out in corner of the county you’re looking at maybe 20 minute response for something like this.
Full disclaimer: I am not okay with street takeovers. They’re incredibly dangerous and I would like them not to happen, full stop.
That said, as states and other parties look for solutions to prevent them, I encourage us to take a step back and reflect on what proposed solutions will actually accomplish. Where do these takeovers come from? Why are people participating in them? What are the systemic issues leading to people behaving dangerously anti-socially?
I can tell you right now, the answers given by the states are going to be pretty much exclusively resting in incarceration, increasing sentencing and penalties as a whole. But I’m going to go out on a limb and say that’s actually just going to make the problems worse.
People participating in street takeovers aren’t going to stop because it’s made ‘more illegal’, just as draconian sentencing for minor crimes (e.g. three strike rules) hasn’t had an effect on the rates of those minor crimes. Street takeovers, and for that matter, things like quad/atv/dirt-bike rides or joyriding/unorganized car theft in general, aren’t happening because individual people are just ‘bad’ and ‘want to do bad things for fun’.
These events are reflective of a broader system and culture that places very little value on human life, in which poverty and incarceration trap people in cycles where there is no escape. When your family members are arrested or killed, when there are no meaningful jobs (because working for McDonalds or 7-11 actually does suck and doesn’t remotely pay a skyrocketing rent, sorry), you’re going to internalize the very real idea that society does not value you, that there isn’t much worth living for. So you’re going to seek out ways to feel alive, to push back and flip a middle finger to the world that doesn’t give a shit about you.
I’m not going to justify takeovers, or minimize the harm they do. It’s real, and again, *I am not okay with it*.
But when you combine systemic injustice, individual and general trauma, and an all-encompassing sense of hopelessness with an omnipresent car culture that encourages dangerous behavior (giant high speed stroads, no pedestrian safety, de-facto legalized manslaughter in vehicular accidents, etc.), this is not a shocking outcome.
Final note: about six months ago, I spent a day and a half in misery with my neighbors in a local encampment, trying pointlessly to keep my city from crushing their tents and belongings with a garbage compacter and laughing about it in front of them. Late that night, around 3am, as we were trying to get folks fed and set up with some new gear, a couple of teens came driving through in a clearly stolen car, out for a joyride.
I cannot tell you the last time I have heard a laugh that was in that much pain. These were clearly kids, and as they drove through, they were laughing, and it was a hair away from sobbing and screaming at the same time. It was, frankly, haunting, and I can still hear it. Whatever was going on in those kids lives, I can tell you they were desperate for something, because you could hear in their voices they were borderline suicidal.
Next time this comes up, please take a moment to think about where this is coming from. I’m not saying I have answers, and I’m not okay with reckless actions that can easily end a life. But I know the first response is going to be to say, lock them up and throw away the key. It’s going to be mixed in with all sorts of racism and nasty bias, with calls for executions and worse (just pop on Twitter, you’ll see).
I just can’t see how disposing of lives like that is going to make anybody who’s already feeling disposable feel any more responsibility and care for the world around them.
God, I still think about those kids, and I hope they have found something to care about in the world.
I was just coming here to say something like this.
You want this to stop?
Well you are going to have to come up with something better than more laws because they obviously aren’t working.
How about providing people with purpose and meaning in life? Building a society that treats people with care and empathy while providing opportunity so people don’t feel so alone an hopeless consequences don’t matter to them?
or at least providing a skid pad. If they can afford the cars to do this, they should be able to afford admission.
Once again we have a lack of understanding of the people participating in these things…
In many cases people can’t afford admission, or the travel, to safer spaces.
Or they don’t feel welcome in those spaces.
Parking lots are everywhere. These jerks chose an intersection because it was where they could cause the most chaos.
Where I live, in Chicago, they are often in intersections because many of the lots large enough and empty enough to do this sort of thing are gated, have security, or are otherwise unavailable.
Also, no place will rent their lot for that sort of event, so you won’t be able to do it on the up and up, either.
And the point is that they all want to do something against the establishment. It is partially people lashing out to fight a system they feel has it out for them.
You are being super reductive and making this sort of action out to be a much simpler issue than it actually is.
This happened in LA not in Chicago.
“You are being super reductive and making this sort of action out to be a much simpler issue than it actually is.”
Bullshit. This isn’t a protest. It’s jerks being jerks.
LA, where space is at MUCH less of a premium than Chicago…
I never said it was a protest.
It is acting out.
But just like with a child, sometimes it is easier to prevent acting out by changing the conditions that cause it than it is through punitive actions.
Or you can just keep ratcheting up the enforcement side until we enter a total police state which sounds super fun.
What is jail if not a time out?
It is a time-out that follows you for the rest of your life and has a bearing on your ability to get a decent job.
It is also time spent out of society in an environment meant to punish, not to improve.
Too bad nobody ever told them that society as a whole frowns on people breaking laws, endangering others, and damaging property. If only somebody, anybody had taken the time to tell them that jail sucks and participating in dangerous, illegal activities might *gasp* have consequences.
“It is also time spent out of society in an environment meant to punish, not to improve”
That depends von the court ordered community service that often follows. Maybe a few weeks of taking care of burn victims will improve their respect for fire.
This is specifically In response to the concept of jail time.
And community service often ends up with people being taken advantage of as free labor.
It’s also generally not specifically assigned to a certain task. I also doubt they’re going to have untrained offenders admister medical care…
You have obviously never been through the criminal justice system.
“And community service often ends up with people being taken advantage of as free labor”
Yes it does, something I’ve been highly critical of here myself. It’s called the 13th amendment, AKA constitutionally sanctioned slavery. So kids don’t put yourself at risk by doing stupid ass shit like slideshows and lighting cars on fire. Is helping out in a burn ward too much of an ask? Well there’s plenty of trash to be picked up along the roadside too.
By engaging in a sideshow and especially by burning cars all these people are showing the court is they have more free time than brains and that they pose a danger, making them ideal 13th amendment bait.
Besides its not like young people have nothing better to do. This isn’t an era when a stick and hoop or getting pregnant are the only games in town. There are community centers, rec centers, TV, video games, public parks, libraries, volunteer work, bike trails, parties community college, youtube, backpacking, vanlife, camping, youth groups, athletics, etc. There have never been more ways for young people to keep busy in a non destructive, non life wrecking (or ending) manner.
“You have obviously never been through the criminal justice system.”
You obviously don’t know me. But that is irrelevant.
What is relevant is I used to work alongside a formerly troubled person who was missing an ear. It had been ground off a few years earlier as he slid across pavement at high speed after he was thrown from the car he was street racing in. THAT is what it took to knock sense into him. Only after he lost his ear did he get his shit together; nothing else had changed, no doors opened to him that had been previously closed, no changes to his upbringing, no new job opportunities suddenly fell into his lap, no new college acceptances or funding that hadn’t been there before. If anything life got harder when missing an ear. All that changed is he simply opened his eyes and saw what a tool he had been.
He didn’t use a prosthetic because (paraphrasing here) he wanted the constant reminder of his stupidity and because he wanted to be a living cautionary tale to others doing the same stupid shit that had lost him his ear. I respected him for that.
So based on his testimony and the plethora of free and low cost entertainment/education alternatives available my sympathy for bored, disaffected young people (which does exist) ends at stupid ass shit like street racing, slideshows and especially lighting cars on fire. It’s wrong, they know it’s wrong, they know the consequences there are alternatives and yet they do it anyway. Unfortunately sometimes the only thing that gets through is tragedy and personal loss. No amount of social engineering will help those idiots.
You’re extrapolating your experience in Chicago to something that happened in LA. I live in LA. A street takeover happened only two blocks from my house. I’ve seen who these people are. It is not reductive to call out irresponsible shitty behavior when you see it.
Who has it out for them? The minimum wage for restaurant workers here is $20 an hour; that’s 2.5 times what it was only 10 years ago ($8) when I was 19. Somehow I refrained from burning cars in an intersection even in those dark times.
We have housing for the homeless, heavily subsidized healthcare for those with low incomes, and some of the highest taxes in the nation all in an effort to subsidize the less fortunate. Thousands of people are immigrating here because they think they can have a better life here than wherever they came from.
You have an unusual way of understanding what it means to have a system that has it out for them.
There is nothing wrong with calling out shitty behavior.
“There is nothing wrong with calling out shitty behavior”
And EVERYTHING wrong with NOT calling out shitty behavior.
You know what you get when you don’t call out shitty behavior?
More shitty behavior.
Know what you get when you excuse shitty behavior?
Even shittier behavior.
Know what happens sometimes when you call out people on their shitty behavior?
No more shitty behavior. So keep calling them out on it till the message or Darwin gets through.
It’s true for toddlers and man children alike.
.
While it is possible that many of the youth in street takeovers are troubled, that does not excuse their callous disregard for the safety of others. And I’d bet real money that for every genuinely troubled youth in this crowd blowing off steam there are several others that simply want to be where the party is at and enjoy posting crazy shit on social media.
Saying that enforcement won’t work because there are systemic reasons for what is happening sounds nice, but at the end of the day people function based on incentives. If there is no negative incentive preventing someone from doing something, people will do it because they are not afraid of the consequences. The systemic problems that make people troubled are not going to be solved overnight, so you can’t simply go hands off in the meantime and say “well, we shouldn’t enforce existing laws until we fix these systemic problems.”
I used to be a very troubled person and you know what? I auto-crossed at the track. And when I couldn’t afford that? I found a secluded mountain road to drive on where I tried my best to minimize any risk my driving would have on other people. I NEVER contemplated participating in an activity as stupid and pathetic as a street takeover or sideshow as an outlet for my mental health troubles. Perhaps instead of expressing the least bit of concern for how my actions would affect others, I should have simply gone total F*** You mode knowing that there would be people on the internet who would give good reasons why such behavior should not be aggressively policed. Maybe I should just stop paying taxes this year and use income inequality as justification for my actions. Same logic.
*rant over*
We need to separate the individuals from the behavior. YES we need to address the systemic problems that lead to people becoming troubled. NO we should not allow this sort of behavior under any circumstances. Thinking that this sort of behavior will go away on its own through better homes, schools, jobs, and community outreach or whatever is a fantasy; people who care little for others will continue to do dangerous and stupid things so long as the likelihood of getting caught and punished for it is low enough. Unless you are able to solve the problems of poverty, income inequality, and mental health in the near future (I’ll wait), enforcement is the next best thing we can do. A lack of enforcement only further encourages this sort of behavior.
As someone who has been in a dark place and contemplated suicide, I resent the free pass to this sort of behavior that your (admittedly well-articulated) comment implies. Even back then, I somehow managed to not be a shitty human being to everyone around me.
I hear the California Conservation Core is a good place for troubled youth:
https://ccc.ca.gov
I did some volunteer work alongside a CCC crew a couple years ago, fwiw. Good group of young women & men, definitely the type of program that could use all the funding and available capacity they can handle.
Which is why I’m happy to shill for them.
“others that simply want to be where the party is at and enjoy posting crazy shit on social media.”
What is that if not troubled behavior?
Or os it only troubled if it fits YOUR concept of how it is expressed?
The homeless issue is very separate and independent from that of disaffected youth. If you dig into the stats (and you can pick who you want – state or local-run stats, or SAMHSA for federal clearinghouse stats), most chronically homeless either have a significant mental illness or are addicted to substances (and I’m using “most” properly there – as in, close to 25-40% depending on the year and model you use have a diagnosed or presenting mental illness, and another 35-60% with some overlap have an addiction that meets diagnostic criteria). You can solve the homeless issue tomorrow and it won’t do a thing about youth culture or specifically the street takeover issue.
People talk about “giving purpose” and so on, and I don’t disagree with that whatsoever. However, where I do disagree is things like this:
And… no. Just no. I worked at McDonald’s when I was 15. Everybody has to start somewhere. In terms of suck, it sucked in some ways a lot less than mucking potato bins, or the custodial job I had in college. People need to start somewhere, and McDonald’s is as fine a place as any.
And, while I’m avowedly atheist, “purpose” has to start at home. The single greatest predictor of future criminal behavior among youth is going to be having criminal family. Which in turn places a significant conundrum, and anyone who’s ever worked for DCFS or juvenile corrections can tell you this: You either remove a child from the criminal context (family and friends), or try to compete with the 1 hour you as a caseworker spend with the kid/family against the 167 hours he (mostly he, though there are definitely female juvenile criminals in the mix) spends with the derogatory influence of family and friends. The caseworkers that think 1 hour of caring extra-hard is going to make a difference are the ones that burn out.
But at the end of the day, you either compel people (by taking them away from their family, forcing them into programs, or similar such things), with all its attendant civil liberties and potential for abuse issues), or you have to accept that the negative influence will overpower all the influence you’re seeking to exert.
If you want to solve street takeovers, the macro “Make society better” might sound good, but that’s of little solace to the people whose lives are being ruined by the thefts, property damage, and deaths that invariably precede and proceed from such events, many of whom are in the same socioeconomic strata and culture as the people who are committing the crimes.
Take the crimes, offer counseling (as is common anyway, most of these folks are getting probation/suspended sentence on the first go-around).
But if you want to do more, you’ve gotta accept you’re either going to be incarcerating people or trampling on some civil liberties via removing people from their environment to get the results you want.
“because working for McDonalds or 7-11 actually does suck and doesn’t remotely pay a skyrocketing rent, sorry”
Your poverty argument rings hollow when the people doing this shit are lighting their own cars on fire. They can’t pay rent but they can pay for hooning gas and performance modifications?
I’m not buying it.
AFAIK many or a majority of cars trashed at these takeovers are stolen, or at least reported as such. Whether its insurance fraud or actual theft, the people destroying the cars at a minimum expect no financial repercussions.
Are these stolen cars all base KIAs or pre immobilizer cars?
Most stolen car in California in 2023: 2015 Kia Optima. Followed by the 2000 Honda Civic and 1998 Honda Civic.
Fast and Furious lives on, I guess. Over half of stolen cars in California are stolen in “Southern California,” of which close to 2/3 are stolen in Los Angeles County, for a total of about 60,000 cars stolen in LA County, or approximately 7 cars stolen per hour. Note that this is independent of rental cars that get stolen (in California, that’s embezzlement, not theft, because you were given access and keys to the car voluntarily).
Source here: https://www.chp.ca.gov/FieldSupportSectionSite/Documents/2023%20Vehicle%20Theft%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf
I’m guessing plenty of old Honda iron ends up at these sorts of things.
Well that explains that I guess. At least it shows immobilizer aren’t useless.
Welcome to the world gone mad. Films like “Dead End Drive In” and “Mad Max” have proven quite prophetic thus far, and I predict will prove even moreso into the future.
Those kids most likely have no future no matter what they do or how hard they work to change it, and they know it on at minimum a visceral and instinctual level.
I could not agree more. Street takeovers are beyond irresponsible and give car enthusiasts a bad name.
These street takeover types are not made up of car enthusiasts, they’re just a bunch of assholes in cars who don’t give a f*** about anyone other than themselves.
Cars burned, you say? A “street takeover” you say?
In France this would just be Tuesday.
Good one.
At least if this was in France I’d expect them to be protesting them lowering retirement age or something.
Here, we’re just stirring up trouble for the fun of it.
Don’ worry, we have street takeover also in France… But we also have tricks to deter them that don’t seems to be used in the US… So they are kept in check and stay limited.
Once an area becomes known for street takeovers it gets riddled wih speed bumps and evenually a few 30km/h automatic speed cameras.
You receive the fine by mail a few days after, along wih the points removed from your driving license, you have 12 points ( 6 for a probationary license ), trust me, when you are down to 2 or 3 points you become very careful, as reaching 0 means a revoked license and having to pass the exam again. ( which takes tme and money )
How to you keep the cameras from being destroyed?
There’s a kind of carrot-and-stick approach in France. The sticks are the fine and license points, of course; the carrot builds respect for the cameras.
The violator is sent a moving image that includes shots from several other cameras before and after the offense. These are shot on black-and-white 35 mm film, edited together with several jump cuts and tracking shots, and overlaid with a soundtrack of an actress portraying a middle-class housewife who becomes a prostitute out of boredom with the bourgeois strictures of society reading the relevant text of le code de la route in a flat, uninfected voice. Along with the film is a text with written commentary on and debate about the violation and its depiction by at least two editors from Cahiers du radar, France’s leading journal of traffic camera enforcement.
The violator is provided a physical copy of the film and the print edition of Cahiers du radar in which the commentary and debate were published as well as an electronic copy. Originally the electronic copy was a text-based animated image delivered through Minitel, which remained an option even after Web-based delivery became widespread right up until Minitel was discontinued in 2012. This way the violator, while chastised for committing a traffic offense, is affirmed as a part of the continuing cultural heritage of the nation and consequently is not alienated from the system as a whole.
Bravo.
How do I get a copy?
Speed or run a red light in a monitored area, preferably in a manner that subtly satirizes a culture that prioritizes the ever-increasing stimulation of material consumption and social conformity as a way by which existing hegemonies exert control to maintain their dominance.
Don’t forget the ennui.
Eh
Is that French New Wave?
Kind of. I mean, if I had to comment using an assemblage of stereotypes (or, as Google Translate assures me the French say, un assemblage de stéréotypes) – and, I assure you, I had to comment using an assemblage of stereotypes – I wanted to look as if I put a little effort in.
we tend nowadays to stick them high on a reinforced concrete pole.
They can still be destroyed with the appropriate tools ( read : vehicle )… but that’s usually not the kind of tool the street takeover people have at hand.
Note that automatic speed cameras are pervasive in France… there’s hundreds of them and not just where people perform donuts. Iniially they were officially put in place to protect dangerous areas. ( some were obvious cash cows though, strangely those are the one that have a tendency to end up destroyed, painted over or wrapped in black plastic. ) But nowadays they are put in place for any specious reason a local administration can find.
France? Isn’t the retirement age there around 32 weeks of gestation?
J/k
FYI, I’ll personally be retired at 67 as I studied a bunch. The earliest you can retire is 64 now.
I didn’t know you guys in the US knew of the concept of retirement 😉
Were these deliberately torched, set alight by fireworks, or revved until flaming? Were they stolen? Please keep an eye on this and update, Lewin
I was wondering the same thing. It seems fairly hard to actually torch a vehicle (despite what ’80s tv led me to be believe) unless you’re willing to really put some effort into it. That would seemingly make this bad situation much worse.
It’s actually fairly easy to torch a car if you really want to. A gallon of gasoline into the interior gets the party started quickly. You could also cause a fire by rupturing something hot in the engine bay and adding accelerant to that fire. I’ve seen people set their own cars on fire by rev-banging until something blew up.
I may or may not have experience with more car fires than the average person… *nervous laugh*
Yea I was about to say it’s surprisingly easy. I used to see burned out cars on the side of the parkway with regularity for about a year. They were used for a crime and then abandoned/incinerated.
That captures better what I was trying – badly – to say about willing to put in the effort – it doesn’t just accidentally happen in a normal course of use, it has to be (fairly) purposeful. Or at least, it takes an unfortunate confluence of events to go down that way (see what I did there!)
This reads like you grew up in the country. No one knows how to blow things up like rednecks.
“No one knows how to blow things up like rednecks.”
Oh? Ok lessee…
Lots of ammonia based fertilizer? Check!
Lots of Diesel fuel? Check!
Lots of gunpowder? Check!
Lots of dynamite for tree stumps? Check!
Yep, that checks out.
Haha, I was just basing it on my childhood, but this is 100% accurate.
Helped my uncle ‘dig’ water dugout using fertilizer, diesel and blasting caps a couple of summers on his farm. Good fun at 15. For stumps we used one of the tractors with a loader attachment and some chains.
Friends 62 Chev Belair burned to the ground during a friday night party due to benign neglect. We all had to walk home that night post party and excitement of watching the fire department, police and neighbour’s run around in panic. No hooliganism involved, just a tired old car and idiot teenagers. It was determined to be electrical in nature and started in the engine compartment.
The fact that zero arrests were made is ridiculous, I get that it’s a dynamic situation, but people need to be held accountable.
Also I feel like intentionally blowing up vehicles in the middle of an intersection should be enough to warrant a domestic terrorism charge, given people have bit hit with that charge for less. I suspect the threat of a decade plus in jail would help deter people somewhat.
By the time the police gets there, everybody’s scattered. These gangs do a pretty good job of obstructing the surrounding areas so that the police and fire department are delayed. And, without concrete proof of who and how an individual did what, prosecution would be impossible even if they were arrested. Add to that the political climate here in California, where most defendants are released on their own recognizance unless the crime is especially heinous (and, burning a car in an intersections isn’t going to qualify for that).
And within an hour all the offenders have posted confessions and evidence to youtube.
And the prosecutors still decline to prosecute…..
You show a shocking lack of understanding if what motivates people who do stuff like this and how they feel about possible consequences to their actions…
I think that’s a completely fair thing to say. I’m a textbook rule follower by nature, so I really don’t get why this is so appealing, and I think as a result my default thought to fixing the problem is what would deter ME, but you’re right in that it wouldn’t work in reality. I’ve already been deterred, they haven’t.
I think what I often forget too, having not lived in a city, is that there are serious social and economic forces that result in this sort of behavior, and more policing doesn’t solve that. It’s a nuanced cause and effect that leads to a big, very visible issue, which brings out quick and careless solutions (like my own)
All that to say, I think it would be apt to heavily modify or retract my prior comment, although that button has since gone away. I’ve definitely been getting burned out and grumpy with all the negative news recently, but returning to base instinct helps nobody.
I’m really impressed by this interaction and wanted to add that in. It’s easy to snipe and ossify with any sort of reaction, but it takes real self reflection and care to do what you just did. Thank you for reminding my why I (generally) like the comment section in these here parts.
Yo, keep being awesome.
This is the best possible response I could have imagined.
Thank you for listening, having an open mind and being willing to think about the world others experience.
Straight to jail
Jeez. It makes the race track we used to set up in shopping mall parking lots look tame. At least we were smart enough to be where the cops weren’t when we were hanging it out.
Many people today do not respect the laws or the police like they used to, and recent actions taken to reduce policing play right into the hands of people who break the law.
So I’m assuming your username is ironic?
I feel like in recent years law enforcement has done very little to earn or maintain respect…
Do you truly think additional policing is what solves this?
Crime is never solved, however yes I do believe we need more policing. Laws lose their purpose if they are not enforced adquately.
I mean you could look at crime stats and from countries that use less aggressive and less punitive law enforcement and have not militarized their police as we have an see lower crime…
Or you could just continue to allow an armed and aggressive gang with legal immunity to consequences for their actions to violently fight people…
Kids today! Get off my lawn! *shakes wrinkled fist at cloud*
Quiet quitting cops being little babies because America said you’re not allowed to strangle a dude to death in broad daylight. Cry me a river.
They’d show up if you told them there was a dog they could shoot, but don’t count on them for anything else.
Cops here outright REFUSE to do anything.
Oh I live in DC and at this point there’s no guarantee anyone is even picking up the phone if you call 911.