"Stroads" as they're called they're not a street or a raod they're both. Too wide for a street but with multiple entries and exits too much access for a road. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad

I'm surprised police wouldn't use something like a Stringer/blast ball to disperse large crowds that are beyond control, a riot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blast_ball

This. I live in south LA and I’m a block away from a street with regular takeovers, mostly on Sunday nights. It is a residential street with seven (!) lanes of traffic. Part of the problem is admittedly that LAPD does not enforce road traffic laws because doing so would inconvenience their friends and family, and they don’t care about the (mostly black or Latino) residents of the residential neighborhoods in which these happen. But takeovers don’t happen in cities that are designed for humans because they’re physically impossible.

Cities that were "designed for humans" would have open businesses and activities for people to do at night. Here in SF for example businesses start closing around 7PM. There's one restaurant near me open later than 10PM, but it has no indoor seating. Golden Gate Park is covered with signs telling me not to be there after sundown. The roads aren't the problem — there's nothing else to do.

I can absolutely assure you there is plenty to do in Los Angeles at 7pm. It’s not San Francisco. The problem is the seven and nine lane residential streets with no traffic lights for a mile.

I think part of what "not designed for humans" is probably suggesting is that you shouldn't have to drive away from your nine lane residential street in order to go find something to do.

I don’t think it has anything to do with the number of lanes directly, it’s just a bunch of opportunistic assholes taking advantage of a bunch of lazy cops.

I have little insight into LA because South Pasadena isn’t known for street races but here in San Diego, the intersection between my house and the I15 (in an immigrant/family oriented suburb at the outskirts of the city) regularly gets taken over by these assholes on Friday nights. They not only do donuts in a four lane intersection but use it as a launch point for late night freeway races which regularly break triple digit mph [1].

The cops are fucking useless [2]. There’s at least three squad cars every time and all they do is a half assed attempt at crowd control.

At this point I’m hoping my alibaba bulk order of caltrops doesn’t get held up by customs.

[1] a few years ago “in my youth” I pushed my Toyota Corolla to the max racing one of these fellows at midnight going west on the 52 right before the warped asphalt (which has sadly been fixed). If I managed to reach the limits of my speedometer you can bet the guys with turbos are even worse.

[2] a few months ago I was driving down the freeway a few cars behind a cop right as they received a call. For the next five minutes I watched several dozen cars completely ignore the flashing lights, forcing the cop car to weave in and out of traffic like a street racer.

I don't think it does either. The article even mentions this:

Drivers became more brazen during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns, which cleared normally clogged streets and freeways of traffic. Suddenly, many streets were empty and drivers believed they had a newfound freedom to speed, either for takeovers or street racing.

Actually this is a nation wide phenomenon and not just in LA. Road deaths/accidents and road rage incidents are increasing since 2020. I believe The article mentions the takeovers in Arizona also.

I personally think that quote is exactly correct. The empty streets in 2020 caused people to start going faster and taking advantage of the roads and they haven't changed their mindset.

Although in fairness to the police, pulling over a person for a traffic ticket can lead to a gun fight so it's possible police have decided it has a high risk and low reward as far as their time goes.

Also don't dismiss the fact that cops are less likely to intervene since the 2020 defund movement.

I guess you mean designed for today's humans.

Before the late 1800s, cityfolk did not have to go get entertained at night or do other business -and they lived and they prospered for thousands of years. Nor do people in small villages have to.

This is such a silly argument. Before the late 1800s cityfolk didn't even have electric light :p https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Street_Station

Only pointing out those are wants and not needs. And living in a city does not necessitate the ability.

I live in inner city Portland where street racing is a huge problem. I live in an area designed for humans.. the area was great until the lockdowns came

Lockdowns of any kind are not designed for humans.

It's not lockdowns. They had lockdowns all over the world. The US is almost the only countries in which roads became more dangerous during the pandemic (see second chart here: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/27/upshot/road-deaths-pedest...).

> they don’t care about the (mostly black or Latino) residents of the residential neighborhoods in which these happen.

From wikipedia:

> As of 2019, the Los Angeles Police Department had 10,008 officers sworn in. Of these, 81% (8,158) were male and 19% (1,850) female. The racial/ethnic breakdown:

    48.8% or 4,882 was Hispanic/Latino (of any race)
    30.9% or 3,090 was non-Hispanic White
    9.62% or 962 was African American
    7.66% or 766 was Asian
    2.46% or 246 was Filipino American
    remaining were Indian and Other Ethnicities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Police_Department#...

The problem is not the racial makeup of the LAPD.

When you say "...they don’t care about the (mostly black or Latino) residents..." you're trying to say things without saying them.

I'm not the one who framed it as a race issue, am I? The issue is almost certainly one of class; cops are paid well and are likely to live in middle class neighborhoods. The drag-races likely most common in lower income neighborhoods.

> The issue is almost certainly one of class

true class is how someone conducts themselves, not their color, neighborhood, job, or income.

is it nice to stage street takeovers or is it dangerous and thugish? what did the "cops" do that was questionable, except perhaps show too much restraint?

Not exactly. Rural 2 lane roads have a long history as being used as drag strips. Although perhaps less problematic when it's not near any houses, cross streets, etc.

Straight rural roads are good for this because of the lack of traffic. Curvy rural roads with a lot of trees, not so much.

I think in Japan a lot of curvy roads out in the country are used for drifting(with spotters of course).

That seems like a similarly organized affair to the takeovers, so I guess it’s doable if you want it badly enough.

Takeovers aren't races. They are groups of cars doing donuts, usually at an intersection, watched by a large crowd. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sideshow_(automobile_exhibitio....

Depends on your definition. It may also vary regionally. Either way, they are substantially similar.

In other news, a simple way to cure your athlete’s foot…is to amputate your foot! Problem solved, right?

Not everyone agrees with you that cars and roads are something we should discourage.

they're talking about stroads. the anti-stroads people aren't against cars or roads or streets, they're against stroads in particular, because they combine all the worst things about streets and roads, and kill all their benefits.

i think the anti-stroads people are right but naive: stroads are bad, but how did we get them? and in light of your answer to that, how can we expect them to be fixed? undoing stroads will be a huge expense that will only benefit the overwhelming mass of people. it'll never happen.

The use of the word "stroads" is the giveaway. This is a word that is exclusively used by anti-carrists.

The term came from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM

yeah, i've seen the video, it's against stroads, not cars or streets or roads.

> This is a word that is exclusively used by anti-carrists.

No, it is used by folks who like proper design:

> Streets: The function of a street is to serve as a platform for building wealth. On a street, we're attempting to grow the complex ecosystem that produces community wealth. In these environments, people (outside of their automobiles) are the indicator species of success. Successful streets are environments where humans, and human interaction, flourish.

> Roads: In contrast, the function of a road is to connect productive places. You can think of a road as a refinement of the railroad — a road on rails — where people board in one place, depart in another and there is a high speed connection between the two.

> Stroads: Stroads are a mash-up of these two types of paths. We like to call them "the futon of transportation" because, just as a futon is neither a particularly good bed nor a particularly good couch, a stroad is neither a particularly good road or a particularly good street.

* https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/10/30/the-stroad

People who use the word "stroads" want society to stop building stroads and go (back to) building streets and roads. See the ten-minute mark of the video you posted on how The Netherlands does it: stroomweg (highway), gebiedsontsluitingsweg (road), erftoegangsweg (street).

See also his video "The Best Country in the World for Drivers":

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8RRE2rDw4k

You get stroads when people put businesses on roads rather than on streets. When a road is "well-designed", that is, functioning as a route rather than a destination, it seems like a clever place to put a business, because people can get there quickly. But once you build a lot of commercial uses along a road, traffic gets worse because people are slowing down to enter parking lots, and it usually gets widened, making it more dangerous to cross: now you have a stroad. The "obvious" solution is not to allow development along roads, instead pushing this to streets (which may require building more streets), but the lure of tax revenue and short-term thinking is often too strong.

I'm sure you mean well, or at least as well someone who wants to restructure society according to their current hobbyhorse can possibly mean. I like walkable urbanism myself. But the problem with this kind of argument is that people know there are countries where you can have huge highways without this kind of thing happening. Some of them remember living in, say, America circa 2014. And while we cannot--nor should we want to--go back to the benighted days of eight years ago, people will naturally wonder if it's not possible to revert those changes (whatever they are) that made this specific kind of problem start to happen, instead of just plunging ahead into the total revolution of their way of living.

to quote the article:

> Police say they don’t have enough manpower to stop such street takeovers, which have been popularized by the “Fast & Furious” movie franchise. Residents are fed up.

you'd have to be a baby to take that seriously. cops are just lobbying for more money, "manpower." how old is "fast & furious?" 20 years? more?

You're blaming street width? Why not blame oxidation or the vulcanization of rubber? Those are also involved.

For my part, I blame the shitheads not getting their asses thrown in jail with vigorous immediacy. Let the cops barricade the roads and load up the wagons.

Road width is an issue because it inherently encourages fast, not uncommonly reckless, driving. There's a science to this which is implemented in places like the Netherlands, but it gets totally ignored by people who are excessively pro-car.

I'm sure that works well for a country the size of the Netherlands (33500km²). The 48 contiguous US states, on the other hand, comprise an area of 8 million km², and people need a way to travel and travel quickly. The alternative to accessible transportation (and affordable housing) is de facto segregation, and I was raised to believe that's a bad thing lol

How about both? Let’s fix street design AND throw all these people in prison.

HN draws in a large urban audience. A small, but vocal subset of urbanites absolutely hate car transportation and suburbia. It's a fast growing subculture with many adherents. They favor bike and rail transportation, "complete streets", and removal of surface parking lots.

The /r/fuckcars subreddit, for example, would absolutely turn this thread into an anti-car talking point.

I personally don’t hate cars, but I hate that we let them park anywhere for basically free. If we built more high-volume garages and then banned street parking in city cores, our sidewalk cafes and restaurant culture would improve dramatically. Remove parking, expand the sidewalks.

They do have a point though. It’s pretty hard to do donuts in a train!

I'm not a fan of American car culture, but this complaint sounds misplaced. Seoul has no shortage of 10-lane streets, sometimes right next to residential areas. I've yet to hear about anyone "taking over" the street.

What America needs is a competent police force that's held accountable for what it's doing (or not doing).

We need to apply bigger penalties and have better enforcement. We also could use some dialing down this aspect of pop-culture (movies and music in particular)

Comment so skorpeon87 [who is shadowbanned] who said:

"only fools could believe people are influenced by movies, music, and video games."

If that were true, then we would not see people protesting against misogyny or clamoring for more representation in the various media and producers would tell them to take a hike that it was disproven in the 90s.

One interesting question is why this is a problem in the USA. Other countries are just as much into cars and don't have this issue.

I bet in Seoul though they don't hesitate to just strip you of your drivers license completely for infractions like this. That's basically impossible to do in the us. We are utterly dependent on driving, and to strip someone of a license is to effectively remove their means of subsistence.

Yep, here we go, blaming every single thing on wider car infrastructure.

Somehow the wide "stroads" *caused* this behavior by putting a gun to their heads.

There are other countries with "stroads" (e.g. Canada) that don't have this nonsense.

Apparently you've never watched an Isle of Man road race.

I'm no fan of stroads, but have been similar issues in Providence, where it's rare to see a street wider than four lanes, and usually not even that.

I am an avid strong towns reader. However I live in inner city Portland in the exact neighborhood strong towns wants everywhere and street racing is a huge problem here which has led to homicides.

Blaming this on stroads is a dangerous politicized oversimplification.

Good job removing all agency from these people and assigning the blame to wide roads.

This idea is so preposterous it could be made into the story line for a Seinfeld episode. The wide roads made them do it, Jerry!