The city of Stockton, California, dropped a circle of parking barriers into a North Stockton intersection last week, hoping to shut down the street takeovers that have been rattling the neighborhood at all hours. Within days, a beat-to-hell flat-black BMW E36 showed up on camera and drifted right around it.
CBS Sacramento had set up a camera at the intersection specifically to test the barrier’s effectiveness. The footage answered the question pretty definitively. One driver, piloting the kind of bumperless, rattle-canned drift missile that populates every grassroots motorsport paddock in America, laid down a sustained slide around the circle like it was a skidpad purpose-built for the task.
Because that’s essentially what Stockton built.
The barriers were arranged in a ring in the middle of the intersection, breaking up what had been a wide-open expanse of asphalt. The logic tracks on paper. Remove the open space, remove the problem.
But whoever designed it apparently never consulted a single person who has ever touched a steering wheel in anger. A fixed circle in the middle of a flat intersection isn’t a deterrent. It’s a roundabout with no curbs.
Street takeovers have been a growing headache across California and other states for years. Dozens of cars block off an intersection while drivers do burnouts, donuts, and drifts, usually between midnight and 4 a.m. Spectators pack the perimeter, the noise is brutal, and the danger is real.
Cars regularly plow into crowds. Cities from Los Angeles to Sacramento have thrown resources at the problem, from felony charges to welded-on speed bumps to RICO-style conspiracy prosecutions targeting organizers.
Stockton’s approach was cheaper and more creative, but it fundamentally misunderstood the physics involved. A person doing donuts in the middle of an open intersection doesn’t need all that space. They need a pivot point, and the city gave them one free of charge.
The E36 in the footage is the perfect messenger for the absurdity. These cars are worth next to nothing. They’re rear-wheel drive, light, and disposable.
The drift missile community buys them already damaged, strips them further, and beats them until the subframe cracks. A circle of plastic bollards is not going to register as a meaningful obstacle to someone who treats curbs and walls as soft suggestions.
Nobody should be celebrating street takeovers in residential neighborhoods. People live there, they work in the morning, and they have kids asleep upstairs. The noise alone is antisocial enough before you factor in the genuine risk of a 3,200-pound sedan going sideways into a front yard at 2 a.m.
But the gap between Stockton’s intention and its result is hard to ignore. Speed bumps, raised intersections, or even strategically placed concrete planters would have been harder to dance around. Instead, the city spent money installing what amounts to a training aid.
Stockton says it’s monitoring the situation and considering additional measures. The E36 driver, presumably, is also monitoring the situation.
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