Like any community, the automotive enthusiast community has some factions and subsets that are more troublesome than others, and the latest battleground for automotive rabble rousers are street takeovers. Cities across the United States have faced weekly onslaughts of Chargers, G35s, Mustangs, Camaros, and other rear-wheel-drive vehicles doing donuts in massive clouds of tire smoke as rowdy crowds gather, sometimes leading to violence. The city of Cleveland, Ohio recently undertook simple yet drastic measures to prevent these dangerous takeovers: city officials created a dedicated task force that carved a checkerboard of staggered textured indentations in popular intersections.
Previously, the California city of Compton installed an array of reflective dots in an intersection that was a common ground for these takeovers, though the effort was entirely in vain as the dots failed to effectively deter takeover activities. Up until now, the most effective tactic that authorities can deploy to safely bring these volatile gatherings to a screeching halt has been use of “stop sticks” which puncture participants’ tires, forcing them to stop. Now though, Cleveland is taking a page out of Kansas City’s book and cutting grooves into popular intersections which effectively shred and destroy tires if a burnout or donut is attempted.
Cleveland authorities received over 100 calls regarding street takeovers in a single weekend in September, which was the catalyst for significant legal involvement. The city of Cleveland is not joking around about reigning in these disruptive displays, even going so far as creating a dedicated street takeover task force. One of the first efforts made by the task force was to perform this road milling tactic at the intersection of Lee Road and Harvard Road. The newly milled intersections are a part of a pilot program at the moment, but if the innovative solution is found to be effective, it could spell the end of street takeovers and smooth intersections as we know them.