Illegal car racing often makes headlines. But the increase in cases in Saxony-Anhalt also has to do with a change in the police counting method.
Magdeburg (dpa/sa) – The number of illegal car races on Saxony-Anhalt’s streets is at a high level – also because the police have been consistently counting drivers fleeing controls for some time. Because it happens again and again that drivers who are supposed to be checked simply drive away. Such cases are now classified as “individual races”. But races on the streets still occur.
In 2021, the state police registered a total of 254 illegal motor vehicle races, according to figures from the Interior Ministry. The year before, there were 234 cases recorded. In 2019, the total was 62 criminal proceedings. For 2022, the Ministry of the Interior expects the numbers to be above the level of the previous year.
The increasing number of criminal charges is not necessarily due to an actual increase in banned car races, said a ministry spokeswoman. Because since 2019, more cases nationwide in which drivers flee from the police at high speed have also been recorded in the statistics as illegal car races. In 2021, more than two thirds of all cases involved such “police escapes”. A total of 27 traffic accidents were registered in 2021 as part of the illegal races, said the spokeswoman for the Ministry of the Interior. Five people were seriously injured, ten slightly.
