Gavin Newsom signs law aimed at cracking down on illegal street racing and ‘sideshows’
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday signed a law aimed at cracking down on illegal street racing and so-called “sideshows” by adding a driver’s license suspension for up to six months to the punishment for convicted offenders.
California Assembly Bill 3, authored by Assemblyman Vince Fong, R-Bakersfield, will go into effect July 1, 2025. Fong said dangerous street racing and sideshows have taken too many lives.
“This law helps make our communities safer by giving law enforcement another tool to curb reckless sideshows,” Fong said on his Twitter account Thursday evening. “We’re sending a message that this dangerous activity is no longer acceptable.”
Currently, state law prohibits vehicle exhibition speeding on highways or aiding or abetting in that type of street racing. A conviction results in jail time for not more than 90 days, a fine of not more than $500 or both jail time and the fine.
The new law would allow the court to order a driver’s license suspension of 90 days to six months and restrict the convicted offender to driving only for the purposes of their employment. The law will allow the court to consider a convicted offender’s hardships when deciding whether to suspend or restrict a driver’s license.
State Assembly members Laura Friedman, Jesse Gabriel and Adrin Nazarian, along with state Sen. Susan Rubio, coauthored the bill.
Sideshows are “illegal gatherings in which groups of drivers take over intersections, city streets, stretches of busy freeways and/or parking lots to do tricks with their cars, including burnouts and doughnuts,” The Sacramento Bee reported.
Groups of spectators can reach into the hundreds, often blocking even more traffic lanes. Some sideshows go on for hours, while others clear out in minutes to avoid police.
In September 2020, a man was hit by a car during a large sideshow near the Promenade in the Natomas neighborhood of Sacramento and was seriously injured, police said.
A July 2019 sideshow in North Highlands split off to at least two other spots. The crowd swelled from about 100 to 200 or more, leading every available officer from the California Highway Patrol North Sacramento Office to respond to the incident.
In Santa Rosa, police observing a September sideshow were pelted with rocks when they tried to break it up after reports someone had been shot, The Press Democrat reported.
This story was originally published October 8, 2021 at 11:43 AM with the headline "Gavin Newsom signs law aimed at cracking down on illegal street racing and ‘sideshows’."
