Illegal in Illinois? Doing Doughnuts On Snow Covered Parking Lot

Back in Montana it's considered good parenting to take your kids out to a snow-covered parking lot after a couple of inches accumulate to teach them what driving, spinning, and sliding in snow feels like.

Deliberately have them lose control of the vehicle in the snow to have the experience of steering out of a slide and knowing how much to correct out of a spin.

In a Reddit conversation, contributor goldandguns said that their "driving instructor actually encouraged us to do donuts in the snow in a parking lot to learn how to correct steering."

But is it illegal to be on a snow-covered patch of a parking lot and intentionally spin out, even if there are no other cars or obstacles around that could cause property damage? What about doing snow doughnuts in the parking lot at a local high school?

From everything I'm finding, you ARE breaking the law if you're spinning out on the snow in a shopping mall parking lot, school, or church parking lot. Law enforcement can arrest you for reckless driving for deliberately doing doughnuts in the snow, and if you cause any property damage, the charges can go up from there.

An Illinois man was actually arrested and charged with reckless driving in 2019 after being seen doing doughnuts in a Walmart parking lot in Carmi, Illinois. In Georgia, there's a teenage driver who has been charged in the hit-and-run death of a man after the teen was doing doughnuts in a parking lot and hit a man who was killed.

One post from a user of Officers.com said doing doughnuts on the snow isn't going to get you into any trouble if it's at a business with "a private employee-only parking lot and that parking lot is chained off or gated and posted private parking only and there are No Trespassing signs, and no one else or their vehicles are there (it's empty) and you have the permission slip."

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Illegal in Illinois? Doing Doughnuts On A Snow Covered Shopping Center Parking Lot

LOOK: The most expensive weather and climate disasters in recent decades

LOOK: The most extreme temperatures in the history of every state