If you’re tired of street racers ruining your sleep, putting others in danger and often facing few consequences while the wheel of justice slowly turns, you aren’t alone. Just ask, like, all of Seattle. Several lawmakers have tried introducing legislation to curb that kind of behavior, but it hasn’t been easy. Now Kentucky lawmakers may introduce a bill that would allow them to crush any cars seized from people convicted of street racing, WHAS11 reports.
State Representative Jason Nemes is one of the lawmakers behind the potential bill, and he didn’t hold back when he spoke to WHAS11. “A lot of people who are doing this, they think of their car as their baby,” he told the news outlet. “They’ll think twice about racing their cars on our public streets and endangering our people.”
Nemes continued, saying he’s currently working with the city of Louisville to make his vision a reality and hit those street racers where it hurts by taking their cars. “I want to crush it, I want you to watch it, and I want everyone else to see it so they’ll stop putting our people in danger,” he told WHAS11.
Currently, cars seized from people convicted of street racing are only held in impound for six months. While Nemes is a Republican, his idea to start crushing cars already has the support of Mayor Craig Greenberg, a Democrat. “I strongly support legislation that when we seize vehicles that are partaking in this extremely dangerous behavior, that those cars get crushed,” Greenberg told WHAS11.
Law enforcement is also on Nemes’s side, with Paul Humphrey, the city’s police chief sounding like he relished the idea. “We could do a press conference and pull out all of those cars out here and get like a steam roller and roll over a Corvette or something, that would be pretty neat,” he told the news outlet. “We’re either going to cut it down by convincing them that it’s not worth it, or we’re going to take their means by which to do it.”
Generally speaking, using harsher punishments as a deterrent rarely works as well as it’s intended, so there’s no telling whether or not Louisville crushing cars will actually reduce street racing. At the same time, maybe trying something new is the way to go, and destroying the cars is the only thing that will put a stop to such reckless, dangerous behavior.
H/T: The Drive
