‘Show-off’ drivers are shutting down NC highways, endangering others, police say
‘Show-off’ drivers are shutting down Charlotte streets and highways with increased frequency since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, endangering themselves and the general public, police said Wednesday.
“As we all know, young people customizing their cars and meeting up somewhere to show them off is not a new phenomena,” Charlotte-Mecklenburg police Major Dave Johnson said at a news conference at CMPD headquarters.
What’s different and “particularly disturbing,” he said, is how the gatherings have “devolved” into forms of aggressive driving that put everyone at risk.
Police called the news conference after a group of drivers shut down a side of Interstate 77 at Tyvola Road late Friday, Feb. 5.
Video on social media showed drivers doing burnouts and doughnuts, with traffic backed up in the distance. A 25-second video reviewed by the Observer on Twitter the next day was later taken down.
About 30 Dodge Charger drivers blocked the southbound lanes, WSOC-TV reported.
Johnson described type of street driving on I-77 as “particularly brazen. It’s highly reckless, and it shows a shameless disregard for public safety and for the rules of the road.”
The group vanished by the time law enforcement arrived, and 911 callers gave no details needed to investigate and make arrests, such as a tag number and the make, model and color of a car, State Highway Patrol Trooper Ray Pierce said.
Pierce said he’d never seen a group of drivers shut down an interstate like the one on I-77.
“You are our eyes and ears,” Pierce said of the public.
He urged people to call *47 — the number for the State Highway Patrol phone line — when they see such gatherings forming.
“Do not engage with them or chase them,” he said.
Said Johnson of groups gathering on highways and roads: “We have the ability to respond, but only as they are happening.”
I-485 crackdown ‘a success,’ police major says
Police “have literally seen this activity on every stretch of interstate in Charlotte-Mecklenburg” since the start of the pandemic, Johnson told reporters. “485 in particular, and on 85 and 77 and some local streets.”
Thanks to information from the public, police thwarted a similar gathering planned for last weekend on I-77, he said.
In December, CMPD “disrupted a plan” for hundreds of drivers to similarly gather in the Northlake Mall area, according to Johnson. Police made multiple arrests, including on gun and drug charges, he said.
Since October, police have cracked down on speeding and other reckless driving on I-485 near Prosperity Church Road, making 2,000 traffic stops and issuing nearly 3,000 citations, according to CMPD figures.
“We know this is important, because speed kills, reckless driving kills,” Johnson said. “So far this year, four of our 10 fatal wrecks involved speed. Statewide, in almost half of the (road) fatalities in 2019, reckless driving or speed were factors.”
“This is a serious issue,” Johnson said. “We take it seriously, and we are going to take enforcement action whenever the opportunity presents itself.”
CMPD has partnered with the State Highway Patrol, Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office, Huntersville Police Department and other agencies on such efforts, especially where reckless driving is most prevalent, Johnson said.
Those areas encompass CMPD’s North, University City, Freedom, Steele Creek and Westover divisions, he said.
Of CMPD, Pierce said, “we can’t say thank you enough” for its assistance on interstate enforcement.
Interstates are the purview of the State Highway Patrol.
But with over 200 miles of interstate in Mecklenburg County to cover with just five or seven troopers on duty at a time, Pierce said, help from CMPD and other law enforcement agencies is welcomed and needed.
Charlotte street racing not new
While “aggressive-driving” gatherings such as the one on I-77 on Feb. 5 may seem new, police in the Charlotte area have been dealing with groups of dueling street racers for decades.
In 2006, the Observer reported at the time, young drivers in souped-up cars had been racing for months late at night on roads around Mecklenburg County, exceeding 100 mph.
Police cracked down that year after reports of racing after midnight near the Stonecrest at Piper Glen shopping center in south Charlotte.
About four years earlier, police launched a smaller probe into street racing in northern Mecklenburg that resulted in several arrests and car seizures, according to the Observer.
In neighboring Gastonia in 2005, five people were hurt when a street racer lost control of his car and crashed into a line of people outside a Dairy Queen.
This story was originally published February 11, 2021 at 6:30 AM.