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Slow down!
We use a broad brush here, but drivers generally stay somewhere in the vicinity of the speed limit out of fear that a blue light will be turned on just for them.
But the prospect of triggering a police response is apparently not enough to keep street racers at bay. And it’s enough of a problem that the City Council had to pass a special ordinance attaching some hefty fines to the act.
Council Member Steven Mays said a woman in his 4th Ward called him in tears because she couldn’t sleep, such was the din from the hot rodding cars.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
As part of the discussion, City Attorney Althea Scott said the city could also cite those responsible with reckless driving to add a little more pain to the traffic ticket.
Perhaps this new ordinance will be the answer to this problem. But there is also the possibility that the answer is not more laws but more enforcement of the laws already on the books.
If the drag racing, as it’s called, is so bad that people can’t sleep at night and a city council member is aware of it, where are the police? Are they unaware these incidents are going on? That would be altogether another shame.
If the 4th Ward is having more problems than other areas, are the police congregating there during late night hours to intervene? And wouldn’t a plain old speeding ticket with Scott’s idea of ramping up the fine a bit suffice? Have the police been catching these folks and handing out those already available tickets and the culprits are ignoring them?
There are quite a few more questions about these matters that beg some answers. But it comes to mind that if the police aren’t out there giving out any tickets now, well, the city could say a racing infraction will cost $5,000, but what good would it do?
It also comes to mind that this shouldn’t be that complicated. These folks make a racket at times when things are quiet and they probably like the same streets and byways to do their racing on – somewhere in the 4th Ward would be a good place to start. Is it really that hard for the police to outsmart them? And if that’s the case, will they become smarter if the fines are steeper?
We wonder.