City working on new tactic to slow drifters and street racers down

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - After decades of drifters and street racers speeding through Kansas City, Public Works crews are trying a new tactic to slow drivers down.

They’re using grooves in the street at the intersection of Truman Road and Grand Boulevard after they found success using them in Swope Park.

“This is something that we’ve done to deter unwanted behavior, sideshows, and burnouts that type of thing; where cars get moving in different directions, where they are not supposed to be—this will prevent that,” said City Manager Brian Platt.

Platt said while the grooves are small, they pack quite the punch.

“These grooves have been grinded down into the street just a little bit, not so far into the pavement, but just enough so if a car would try to do a burn out that the tires would get caught on them and they wouldn’t be able to do it,” Platt said.

Platt said they first put the grooves in Swope Park as a test run. “We’ve had great success there, no issues or complaints since we did it a few weeks ago,” Platt said.

READ MORE: City crews making attempts to make downtown streets safer & eliminate side shows

Sandra Jackson has lived in Swope Park since 1968 and said she’s noticed a difference.

“They would race, we would stop that, maybe someone would call the police or something like that, and it was over with,” Jackson said. “It really slowed them down, that’s for sure.”

Platt said because the grooves worked so well, they wanted to try them at another hot spot, Truman Road and Grand Boulevard.

“We get complaints about this all the time here, so we are trying to do what we can to implement new technologies to stop this bad behavior,” Platt said.

Platt said they could be adding more grooves across the city.

“If this works, we will continue to do things like this all over the city; there are other things we’d like to do as well, adding concrete curb extensions, speed bumps, stop signs, all those types of things that help us make our streets safer,” Platt said.