Kentucky state Rep. Jason Nemes told Louisville’s WHAS11 in April 2025 what he wanted done to a repeat street racer: “We’re going to take his car, which he loves, and we’re going to crush it. And I hope he has to watch it.” Seventeen months later, no Kentucky judge has that power. House Bill 425, the second version of Kentucky’s car-crushing street racing bill, died in Frankfort on April 15, 2026, the last day of the legislative session. The House recommitted it to its Appropriations and Revenue Committee, and the session ended with it there.
That leaves Kentucky where it started. Under KRS 189.993, racing on a public road still carries a fine of $60 to $200, up to 30 days in jail, or both. Louisville has been seizing racers’ cars under its own ordinance since 2023 and has crushed one. Las Vegas police shredded two in June. In Los Angeles, police impounded about 200 cars in one Labor Day weekend raid. The state law used for racing arrests caps that kind of hold at 30 days.
Destroying a car is rare. In Louisville and Las Vegas, it has come only after a conviction or after an owner abandoned the car; in Los Angeles, the law used for the raid has no destruction provision at all. What most drivers actually face is the impound and a storage bill that grows every day. HB 425, as the Kentucky Senate rewrote it, would have let a judge order a car destroyed only after a driver’s third racing conviction. Three strikes, then the crusher.
What the street racing bill would have done to a racer’s car
Louisville Democrat Beverly Chester-Burton filed the street racing bill on Jan. 16, with Nemes, a Middletown Republican, as the second sponsor. It raised the fine for a first racing offense to $1,000 and required that the car be impounded for “not less than six (6) months.” A second offense brought a $2,000 fine and forfeiture, with the car “forfeited to the Commonwealth and destroyed or sold at public auction.” Auction money would have gone to the state’s Crime Victims Compensation Board. The House passed it 75-19 on March 16…