Last week, Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed an anti-protest bill into law, enshrining the right to run over protesters with automobiles and kill them without facing civil damages. DeSantis promised “swift penalties” to protests that shut down highways, which the law also authorizes. On Wednesday, Oklahoma’s Republican Governor Kevin Stitt signed an even harsher bill that guaranteed not just civil immunity, but also immunity from criminal charges. As long as a motorist claims it was unintentional, they’re absolved of charges.
Several other Republican-run states like Iowa, Missouri, and Tennessee are rushing to follow suit, and 34 state legislatures including Washington state have considered anti-protest bills, according to the International Center for Not-For-Profit Law’s tracker. Thankfully Washington state’s two anti-protester bills this session, SB 5456 and SB 5310, failed. Senator Kevin Van De Wege (D-Sequim) was among the sponsors of SB 5310.
It’s astonishing that we reached this point in our society’s numbness to violence against protesters and people, and using streets in any way other than operating a motor vehicle. It’s no empty threat and could lead to a wave of vehicular slaughter and maiming, and have a chilling effect on the First Amendment right to protest that is supposed to be guaranteed to every American. More than 26 million people protested in America last year according to The New York Times‘ tally, and the overwhelming majority of protests were peaceful. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has pointed out these laws are a “solution” in search of a problem.
The Capitol Hill Organized Protest had a run-in with a right-winger intent on vehicular slaughter in June. A man veered his car into protesters, got out brandishing a gun, and shot a man trying to disarm him — a hero who explained what happened with a tourniquet on his arm. If this angry man hadn’t been impeded, he could have plowed through a crowd of people at high speed. In response to incidents like these, protest leaders organized car brigades and bike brigades to “cork” intersections seeking to prevent impatient and/or disgruntled motorists from driving into protest routes and targeting people protesting.
This was far from an isolated incident. Researcher Ari Weil counted 72 protester ramming events in just over a month near the height of Black Lives Matter protests last year, as Alex Pareene reported in The New Republic.
Ari Weil, a researcher at the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, counted six states that considered laws shielding drivers who attack protesters in 2017, but most of those “hit and kill” bills (as the ACLU refers to them) went nowhere. It took a few more years for the right-wing propaganda apparatus to fully numb conservative consciences, and prepare them to openly endorse an idea as plainly depraved as this one. In the meantime, the car attacks kept coming: In 2020, Weil tracked “72 incidents of cars driving into protesters across 52 different cities,” over the span of just over a month. The online far right memed about running over demonstrators regularly, and cops openly encouraged it in social media comments. Cops also, in cities such as New York and Detroit, participated in the practice themselves. In Boston last year, Police Sergeant Clifton McHale was recorded on a police body camera bragging about hitting demonstrators with a police cruiser. He was placed on administrative leave when that footage was surfaced by reporter Eoin Higgins. He is now, Higgins reports, back on desk duty.*
Alex Pareene in The New Republic
Emboldened by hit and kill bills and egged on by bloodthirsty police officers, these ramming incidents could become much more frequent and deadly. These laws make an already terrible system worse — 40,000 people die in car crashes every year in the United States, and pedestrian deaths are on the rise. Cars keep getting bigger, heavier, and taller, which only increases their lethality, especially when people walking, rolling, or biking are involved in collisions.
The government (whether city, state or federal) should regulate the size of vehicles to lower the risk of traffic deaths and injuries. Super-heavy personal vehicles and bull bars should be banned in cities and vehicle fees should be weight-based to encourage lighter vehicles. Personal vehicles simply do not need to be weighing in anywhere close to three tons. Studies show heavy, high grill cars like Hummers, Ford F350 trucks, and Ram trucks are more lethal and much likelier to kill pedestrians in collisions. If right-wing extremists are going to treat their cars like weapons, we need to regulate cars like weapons.
