By Laila Hicks
On September 13th, 2025. Saturday morning at 3:30am, a kid named Jose Cuevas passed away at a sideshow in Crockett, California. Jose fell about 75 feet, he had climbed over a safety concrete barrier, on the Pomona Street on-ramp to I-80. This incident involved over 100 vehicles at the time of the accident.
Sideshows are dangerous because of how people act during them. The drivers perform stunts on their cars, and act reckless. In November of 2023, in Stockton, CA, a man lost his foot after being a part of a sideshow. Starting in the year 2023, at least 7 people have died in shootings, and 16 injured, all caused from sideshows.
People think that sideshows are fun and a way of getting an adrenaline rush. Filmmaker Yakpasua Zazaboi – Idea Stream Public Media, claims that sideshows are a way of showing off, and were a “love at first sight” moment for him, but sideshows cause so many injuries, and some of them aren’t even from the cars themselves and only due to the people at the slideshows.
Not only are sideshows dangerous, they are also illegal. Brendan Weber – NBC Bay Area, states “Illegal street racing and sideshows put lives at risk, upset the quality of our neighborhoods, cause damage to private and public property, and in some cases, have resulted in the death of innocent people,” Sideshows can not only cause problems for the people involved, but innocent people that have nothing to do with them. Over the last 8 years, there have been over 300 crashes, 30 deadly and over 100 that result in people getting hurt, all caused by sideshows.
Sideshows are not just hurting people, but also causing police officers to have to respond when they could be helping people that are in a more desperate need. In 2021, CHP (California Highway Patrol), had responded to over 7,300 sideshow incidents. These could have been avoided if people were not so reckless and didn’t start these.
This is why sideshows are so dangerous, as they can not only harm the people involved but people nearby, or around them. They affect police officers as they have to be the ones to respond to the injuries or deaths caused by sideshows that could’ve been avoided if people weren’t so reckless. They also make a lot of noise for nearby people to deal with and or hear, and overall, no sideshows really have a good outcome on them. They don’t make you have a “good time” or make you look “cool”. They just cause injuries, shootings, and in some cases, death.
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