Senator Stern Pushes For Crack Down on Deadly, Reckless Driving
WOODLAND HILLS, CA – Senator Henry Stern (D-Los Angeles) joined Captain Ford of the West Valley Area California Highway Patrol, alongside victims of reckless driving and LA City Councilmembers Blumenfield and Lee, to ring the alarm about the speeding epidemic that is taking hundreds of lives across California.
“Cars are weapons, and whether it’s a sideshow, a street race or just excessive speeding, these are not victimless crimes.” said Senator Stern.
The most extreme instances of speeding lately have been street racing and sideshows, where social media is often used to effect coordinated takeovers of parking lots and intersections. The danger and frequency of these events has grown — citations are up 300% since 2015, from 86 arrests and citations to 341 in 2020. But often these citations are minor and the drivers are back on the roads again without consequence.
Recent victims in the Los Angeles area include the death of a 16 old teenager in Van Nuys on August 10, 2020, the death of an unhoused man on a bicycle and three separate incidents in West Hills, one involving a motorcycle, and another involving a single-mother who was an innocent bystander.
In addition to these deadly speeding tragedies, sideshows and street racing have proliferated in LA since the COVID pandemic cleared the roads of traffic. On October 24, 2021, Connie Levinson was killed during a deadly sideshow in Van Nuys. The driver of the vehicle was doing donuts in the middle of an intersection at high speeds before crashing. Her thirteen year old son Mitchell and his dad Greg, appeared today alongside Senator Stern. Mitchell took the day off school to speak, because, as he said, “it’s important to be out here” despite his sadness and anger, because “people need to know that speed racing is very serious.”
Captain Ford and local level enforcement throughout the region have been attacking these racing rings with saturation events, which will be bolstered by a new $800,000 grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety to bolster their enforcement efforts.
Earlier this week, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, announced new efforts to push manufacturers to improve vehicle safety technology, and new funding from the Federal Safe Streets and Roads for All. Stern hopes LA will benefit from these efforts.
“Sec Buttigieg and Governor Newsom’s leadership couldn’t come at a better time. I look forward to working with the Governor and my colleagues in Sacramento, Washington and LA to double down on funding for law enforcement to keep our streets safe, and prosecute those who do not.”
Stern’s bill is still in development, but his office says it will require more resources go directly to enforcement, not just traffic safety infrastructure and public education, as has been the primary focus in years past. The bill he will introduce next month also will push prosecutors to be more aggressive in going after street racers and other reckless speeders.
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