Cruising in Cali Is Not a Crime! Governor Gavin Newsom Lifts 40-Year Ban

"Low and slow." It is the timeless posture and tempo of the lowrider segment of car culture, in the U.S. and around the world. The term "lowrider" is a designation that blankets the brilliantly painted and heavily blinged, ground-scraping, and, thanks to elaborate hydraulic suspension systems, sky-high-hopping vehicles. And it also identifies a lifestyle, one that emanates from Latin culture, tradition, and pride.

When lowriders and hot rod enthusiasts use "cruising" as a verb, per very crude definition, they are talking about the practice of repeatedly parading vehicles back and forth on a street or through a specific area (typically a small city or town's main street, or a shopping-center parking lot), simply to show off, typically at night in most U.S. cities, or for Los Angeles-area lowriders, on sunny Sunday afternoons.

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Cruising includes an element of automotive posturing at its most grassroots level. It is a vehicle owner's desire for their ride to be seen by everyone who is within eyeshot as it glides down the block. We see cruising as one of many ways to celebrate car culture, and we engage in the activity in our own unique way, through HOT ROD Power Tour each year, and in 2023, for California and the Western states, with the return of Power Tour West.

In 1982, the state of California issued a complete and total ban on cruising. The irony there was that the streets of SoCal are recognized as the place where cruising began (sometime back in the 1940s), with young Latinos congregating on Los Angeles-area boulevards to drive and hard-park their tricked-out sleds. The statewide ban amplified local ordinances that had been established though the years, with citations and vehicle impounding being potential penalties for those partaking in cruise gatherings or altering their vehicles for near-zero ground clearance. A big problem with the regulations was that they unfairly and, more important, inaccurately/stereotypically cited Latino participants as being gang-associated "criminals."

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On October 13, 2023, Governor Gavin Newsom reversed almost 40 years of cruising being outlawed in the Golden State, and the modification of a car or truck's suspension (to radically lower it) by signing California Assembly Bill 436. The gubernatorial act amends Section 21100:

(Local authorities may adopt rules and regulations by ordinance or resolution regarding all of the following matters: (k) (1) Regulating cruising.

(2) The ordinance or resolution adopted pursuant to this subdivision shall regulate cruising, which is the repetitive driving of a motor vehicle past a traffic control point in traffic that is congested at or near the traffic control point, as determined by the ranking peace officer on duty within the affected area, within a specified time period and after the vehicle operator has been given an adequate written notice that further driving past the control point will be a violation of the ordinance or resolution.

(3) A person is not in violation of an ordinance or resolution adopted pursuant to this subdivision unless both of the following apply:

(A) That person has been given the written notice on a previous driving trip past the control point and then again passes the control point in that same time interval.

(B) The beginning and end of the portion of the street subject to cruising controls are clearly identified by signs that briefly and clearly state the appropriate provisions of this subdivision and the local ordinance or resolution on cruising), and it also repeals Section 24008 ("It is unlawful to operate any passenger vehicle, or commercial vehicle under 6,000 pounds, which has been modified from the original design so that any portion of the vehicle, other than the wheels, has less clearance from the surface of a level roadway than the clearance between the roadway and the lowermost portion of any rim of any wheel in contact with the roadway") of the state Vehicle Code.

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To reiterate the legal definition (per California), cruising is the repetitive driving of a motor vehicle past a traffic control point in traffic that is congested at or near the traffic control point, as determined by the ranking peace officer on duty within the affected area, within a specified time period and after the vehicle operator has been given an adequate written notice that further driving past the control point will be a violation of the ordinance or resolution.

With respect to lowriding, and the hot rod hobby overall, the "What is cruising?" onion has many layers. For California, the bottom line is, it is now legal to do it.