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The city of Stockton, California, has had issues with street takeovers—large groups of people driving like dicks in the wee hours of night. I wouldn’t want that in my neighborhood either, and generally support cracking down on such dingbat behavior. But I have to admit, this old flat-black Bimmer’s protest-drift caught on camera around the city’s new “sideshow deterrent” barrier is pretty darn funny.
As CBS Sacramento reports, North Stockton put a circle of parking barriers in the middle of an intersection where people had reportedly been doing sideshows (that’s what they call takeovers, or hoonigan behavior, in parts of the west). Looks like the thinking was: A circle breaking up the big open area of pavement would stop people from smoking tires and spinning around there.
Unfortunately, the city must not have talked to anyone who’s into cars while making this plan, because they inadvertendly built a mini drift course (or, at least, a perfect skidpad). The CBS station set up a camera at the intersection to test its effectiveness, and a lone drift-missle E36 BMW was spotted hanging a pretty nice sustained slide around the barrier just days after it went up.
New sideshow deterrent installed at North Stockton intersection
Again, I ain’t condoning this. If you must rip donuts, have the decency to do it far away from houses and residential areas. Some people have sleeping kids at home and work in the morning. Not to mention, nobody trusts the average takeover driver to be able to keep their SRT, G37, or bumperless BMW under control at three in the morning.
Meanwhile, the city of Stockton should probably be looking into speed bumps next time.
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Automotive journalist since 2013, Andrew primarily coordinates features, sponsored content, and multi-departmental initiatives at The Drive.
