Inwood has been a street racing hub for years. Locals have had enough.

Inwood is under siege by street racers who roar up and down the neighborhood’s main drag, making residents paranoid they’ll be run down by a speeding driver.

Sherman Avenue, which runs less than a mile, serves as a sort of Main Street in the Upper Manhattan neighborhood. It’s usually filled with empanada stands and neighbors playing dominoes. But for years, it’s also been a notorious hotspot for drag racers who drive like maniacs.

An early morning drag race nearly turned fatal earlier this month. Police said drivers of a Corvette and a Mercedes-Benz were racing through the neighborhood about 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 20 when they crashed at Sherman Avenue and West 204th Street, sending both cars onto the sidewalk and into the front of a deli. The aftermath, which passersby captured on video, showed mangled cars and a pedestrian splayed out on the sidewalk in pain.

Police said two people in the Corvette and a pedestrian were injured, and the Mercedes-Benz driver ran off.

West Harlem resident Eric Torres, the Corvette driver who allegedly caused the crash, was charged with aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle. The Manhattan district attorney’s office said he was also arrested and charged last September for driving a stolen 2025 Acura TSX that had stolen New Jersey license plates inside, adding that he later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor.

Locals said they’ve had enough of the racing, and are calling on the city to make changes to Inwood’s streets to prevent speeding.

“There’s cars speeding through our streets, drivers doing donuts, racing, operating vehicles while under the influence, putting innocent families, pedestrians, and the entire community at risk,” said Elizabeth Adames, whose brother Joel Adames was killed by a driver in 2022 while walking along Sherman Avenue.

Joel Adames was with his friend David Fernandez around 4 a.m. when the driver sped through a red light and crashed into another car, which flew into Adames and Fernandez, killing them both.

Elizabeth said she hears speeding cars down Sherman Avenue “all day, all night, every day, different cars, different people and nothing’s being done.”

“My kids see that and it scares them,” she said. “They know what happened to my brother and it scares them. They have to run and they want to run inside the building.”

Joes Adames was one of two people killed in 2022 by a speeding driver who blew through a red light in Inwood.

Ramsey Khalifeh/ Gothamist

City data shows at least 27 people have been injured in car crashes on Sherman Avenue since 2021. Residents like Adames want more red light cameras, narrower lanes and speed bumps installed on the street.

City transportation department officials said they gave the street a “road diet” in 2015, reducing the car lanes and replacing them with bike lanes and turning bays.

“Every New Yorker deserves to be safe on our streets and those who endanger themselves and others must be held accountable,” DOT spokesperson Scott Gastel said in a statement. “Through Vision Zero efforts, traffic fatalities are at historic lows, and NYC DOT is reviewing the area for additional safety upgrades.”

But locals said it’s not enough to stop the drag racing — and the evidence of the problem is laid bare through skid marks all over the street’s crosswalks.

“You want to do that and drive reckless? You got to be a man and stand up and be accountable when you mess up. … Even if you’re young, you got to learn,” said Angel Rodriguez, 50, who was standing at the corner of Sherman Avenue and Isham Street near a mural honoring Joel Adames, whom he grew up with.

The neighborhood is connected to the Bronx by three bridges, making it easy for the speedsters to flee after a race.

Linda Ng Boyle, vice dean for research at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, studies driver behavior and strategies for reducing dangerous crashes. She said the city knows how to redesign streets to deter the type of drag racing that’s become endemic on Sherman Avenue.

“The only thing to kind of think about is whether or not we can redesign this roadway so that people cannot actually speed through,” Boyle said. “You should absolutely have enforcement, but I don’t think it’s going to be as effective as if we just redesigned the roadway so that you cannot actually do some of the things that are being identified in this area.”

One simple way to reduce speeding on Sherman Avenue, she said, would be to make the road narrower so drivers will have less space to race.