Since the coronavirus lockdowns began, high-speed car accidents – many in excess of 100 miles per hour – have been consistently reported throughout Southern California. Just last week, two people were killed and another seriously injured in a high-speed, multi-car crash near Sylmar that local ABC 7 referred to as “horrific.” Last year, we posted a blog examining the latest data confirming an uptick in reckless driving behaviors, leading to a 14% jump in fatality rates per miles driven in March 2020.
With fewer cars on the road, and law enforcement preoccupied with urgent COVID-19 matters, many drivers decided to operate their vehicles at high speeds along the roads and highways throughout California that would otherwise have been congested with bumper-to-bumper traffic. Speeding has always been recognized as a significant cause of major traffic collisions, a confirmed factor in 26% of all 2019 car accident fatalities. The total number of fatal motor vehicle crashes attributed to speeding that year was 8,544 (killing 9,478, or an average of over 25 people per day).
But a less recognized (and perhaps poorly understood) issue known as ‘street racing’ is, according to authorities, becoming an increasing threat to drivers. In fact, authorities caution that anyone sharing the roads (including pedestrians and bicyclists) is at risk, particularly here in Southern California.
Last month, the BBC published an investigative report on illegal street racing, focusing primarily on the city of Atlanta. The media outlet noted, “People tend to use ‘street racing‘ as an umbrella term. It might mean two cars speeding side-by-side… Or it could be what the law calls ‘laying drag,‘ which includes drivers zig-zagging or doing 360-degree doughnut spins.”
A few weeks after the BBC report, ABC News published a story – “Street racing in California only getting more brazen, and more dangerous” – focusing on the issue plaguing the Golden State. The report stated that over the past decades, “California and car culture have gone hand-in-hand. Illegal races offer the chance to drive cars fast, burn rubber and get a rush of adrenaline, but it’s a lifestyle steeped in risk and recklessness. The slightest mistake can be deadly.”
ABC interviewed Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Sergeant, Michael Downing, a 17-year veteran who reportedly knows the risk of illegal street racing “all too well.”
“It seems lately, almost every weekend or every couple of weeks, we have a fatality somewhere in the county that’s related to street racing,” Sergeant Downing said. “You see on the freeway, all the time, the high speeds and they crash into somebody who’s going slower or [an] innocent party on the freeway gets killed.”
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