Drag Racer Crashes on 3400 Block of Racine Avenue taking out power to the block

Drag Racer Crashes on 3400 Block of Racine Avenue taking out power to the block

A drag racer crashed at high speed shortly after midnight (we have been calling them in to 911 every Friday and Saturday night to no avail).

He is lucky to be alive as you can see from the photos. The power pole is down so there is no electricity to the Art Center.

Luckily there were no pedestrians on the street or he would have killed them. We should also I suppose count ourselves lucky that he did not end up inside our house.

This really highlights the continued chronic problem of drag racing in our area and hopefully this means that something will be done i.e. speed bumps on Racine going south from 35th and extra vigilance and heightened response from the police.

This follows the fatal accident earlier in the month at 34th and Halsted 

Crackdown on Street Drag Racing

The photo above serves as a grim reminder of the impact of high speed drag racing.  The accident that occurred on March 2nd at 34th /Halsted in the early morning hours had fatal consequences of the driver as he lost control at a high speed, sideswiped a parked car and destroyed himself and his auto.  The trend for young car enthusiasts seems to be to fix their cars up with high output (and loud) exhaust systems that border on not being street legal, adding tires and high output tuning systems to their cars.  They have been congregating on weekends at the corner of 35th/Racine and proceeding to make noise along South Racine/1100 block of 37th street and Morgan Street between 37th and 35th street.   Law enforcement is taxed to keep up with other crime issues in the neighborhood and often our calls to 911 go unanswered.  To make matters worse, they use the residential streets along Racine from 31st to 35th street and 34th place from Morgan to Racine as turn around routes.  Poorly lit streets and a park on 34th place are an accident waiting to happen. 

While our young friends seem to be invincible, the accident from March 2nd is a grim reminder that they are not.  We shudder to think what will happen when they come in contact with a car with a family or hit a pedestrian en route home from work.   Drag racing has been an allure of the young car enthusiast for the length of time and has been glorified or trivialized by Hollywood in movies as benign as Grease or more recently the Fast and Furious series of movies.  A multi-million dollar industry has developed around after market options for automobiles ranging from rims and tires to tuning kits, exhaust upgrades, lights and electronic chips which increase the horsepower of stock engines.  You can say that The vanity of youth is driven to cars and everyone outgrows it, but it is a big public safety nuisance and annoyance to be woken up at 1:00am by loud exhaust systems, screeching tires and worse- the crash of an accident. 

The Seattle Suburb of Kent, WA had a similiar issue that was highlighted in the NatGeo special : "Street Heat: High Speed Justice"  You can watch the Youtube video trailer below to see what solutions they came up with to stop the over 200 cars that were coming to the warehouse /industrial area in Kent (sound familiar?) to partake in illegal drag racing. 

What can you do you ask?  Call 911 on Friday and Saturday and request a patrol car from the 911 operator requesting that they send a patrol out to address.   Attending regular CAPS meetings with the 9th district commander to make sure they come up with a team to address this issue.    We realize that relative to the dozens of shootings each weekend in Chicago, this issue pales in comparison and probably urgency, but we won't get 100% of what we don't request from the Alderman and Police Commander. 

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