Court summons for Raunds woman, 21, after car seen performing doughnuts on A43
A 21-year-old Raunds woman has been summonsed to court following an incident at a ‘car cruise’ near Northampton.
Concerned residents called 999 shortly before 10pm on Saturday, October 10 after they spotted an unauthorised car meet on the A43, near to the Kettering Road in Northampton.
By the time officers arrived at the scene, the car meet had moved on so they carried on patrolling potential sites.
A further call into the force control room identified the new location as Summerhouse Road on Moulton Park, Northampton.
A Northamptonshire Police spokesman said: “Between 15 and 20 cars were found to be in attendance.
“A 21-year-old woman from Raunds was witnessed performing doughnuts in her red Mazda MX-5 car near members of the public and later had this seized under Section 59 of the Police Reform Act 2002.
“She was also given a notice of intended prosecution for the offence of driving without due care and attention and will appear at magistrates court at a future date.”
Residents living near Aldi on the A43 in Overstone witnessed car cruisers going up and down this section of dual carriageway which has a speed limit of 40mph.
One resident living in the area said: “There are groups of illegal drag racers that meet up at Aldi car park near the A43 and speed up and down round the roundabout and then back again.
“It’s getting more and more frequent and the police seem to do nothing – it took them nearly an hour to arrive as no cars were available apparently.”
Responding to the car meets, Northants Police said: “This type of behaviour not only causes concerns for our local communities but is simply unacceptable and dangerous. The consequences when things go wrong can be devastating and life-changing for those involved or left behind.
“We will not tolerate any anti-social behaviour and will use every tool at our disposal to disrupt those involved to move people on to prevent further incidents, however, we are aware this could displace the issue.
“We would therefore encourage our local communities to help by continuing to report this to us, which included reporting driving offences by uploading video evidence via the online Operation Snap portal on the Force website.
“Ideally, we do not want to seize vehicles or issue fixed penalty notices, but we will not hesitate to take robust and appropriate action against those who continue to drive their vehicles in an anti-social, careless, or dangerous manner.”