Looking to put brakes on
street racing

New Haven (WTNH) - The City of New Haven is looking to crack down on illegal street racing on a stretch of road popular to those with speed in mind.

Long Wharf Drive is straight and wide for a full mile and that makes it very attractive to street racers. But racing is so dangerous, so the city is taking steps to make this street narrower and curvier and less attractive to racing.

Earlier this year News Channel 8 showed those racers in action. They hit speeds of more than a hundred miles an hour. This summer, a 23-year-old from East Haven was hit and killed by one of those racing cars.

The races happen without warning and take police by surprise. Suddenly a hundred people will be lined up to watch. Police break up the race, those people scatter, but they just come back an hour later and start racing again. The police department can't stop the racing, so the Public Works Department is trying to.

They've narrowed Long Wharf Drive to one lane in a traffic control device called a neckdown. Right now it's just lines painted on the road, but the New Haven Independent reports the city is going to put barrels full of sand and jersey barriers around that neckdown to really make it a squeeze for traffic.

Of course it's not just street racers who will be affected by this. All traffic has to squeeze through the neckdown. And while that may be annoying, hopefully it will mean no more roadside memorials to people killed in illegal races.