mmarshall

As if the notorious D.C. Beltway doesn't have enough traffic problems every day (it's one of the most congested roads in the country), a group of idiotic show-offs on bikes and ATVs, with their heads up their ***es, decided they were going to shut it down a couple of days after Christmas. This is NOT typical of most bike riders in the area (who obey traffic laws), and is NOT meant to suggest otherwise. But it shows what can happen when a group of idle punks, with nothing better to do in their spare time, decide that they are above the law.

Aron9000

DC Suburbs are getting a bit darker aren't they lol

That guy in the bucket truck around 4:35 could've been like "**** THESE *******S" and ran all of them over

mmarshall

.......and the huge number of semis/18-wheelers that routinely use this road every day. Just think if they had barreled through.

The State Police (who patrol the Beltway) think that these were mostly kids from the inner city, who routinely do this stuff on side-streets.downtown, where they can quickly duck into a lot of places if cops show up.

blacksc400

iTrader: (4)

I was going to say how come the cops hasn't showed up :/

chromedome

ATVs don't belong on public roads, I'd say. A Morgan 3-wheeler is perfectly OK though

tradosauru

In Grand Theft Auto V I normally run over all bikers.

mmarshall

One thing that hinders quick police or emergency response on the Beltway is its constantly dense traffic, particularly at rush hours. It, and adjacent sections of I-95, I-270, and I-66, is arguably the most congested part of the East Coast....worse, in some ways, than the New York City area. And, when you are on vehicles as small as those bikes and ATVs, you can quickly zip off almost anywhere if the cops DO show up.

Och

iTrader: (3)

Most idiot bike riders usually don't live very long. They usually end up in a crash with their little brains splattered all over the road.

mmarshall

And doing wheelie-stunts like that is always risky. Evel Kenevil himself, arguably the greatest and most skilled stunt-biker of all time, was held together with more pins, braces and screws in his body than on a kid's Erector-Set LOL.

UDel

It looks like it was not just bikers/atv's holding up traffic but they had people in cars holding up traffic too, you can see a red Mustang and lowered silver Civic with their blinkers on going slow and holding up traffic who looks like they were with them, probably video tapping, hopefully they get the license plates on those cars and others and they are arrested.

Where are the police? Police are everywhere on the beltway and on Baltimore's major highways running radar and handing out speeding tickets for every minor offense yet they are totally absent here.

SW17LS

Getting off on Landover Rd. No surprise there LOL

mmarshall

Actually, no, they are not. That's one of the problems in this area. Traffic is so dense, and the constant stream of cars so pervasive, that police simply can't patrol or do their job in adequate numbers. That's why the Virginia suburbs use red-light cameras, and Montgomery County, in Maryland, uses both red-light and speed cameras. D.C., I believe, also uses them both.

SW17LS

They use speed and red light cameras to make money.

Plenty of police out patrolling the beltway. No speed cameras on the beltway anyways.

That's the kind of strange thing it's hard for police to control without riot crews, etc.

mmarshall

Well, yes, they DO make money (besides helping safety at the same time), but so would the police officers themselves if there were actually enough of them to do the job.


Agreed....and those kids know it. The cops can't really control it in the neighborhood sides streets either, because of all the easy places to quick-duck in and hide. Channel 7 (ABC/WJLA) News ran a good local story on this just a few nights ago.

SW17LS

The cameras are purely for profit. I sat in a local election debate and when asked about whether the candidates supported more speed cameras the answers were all no, because the revenues from them weren't what was expected.