[RI] My neighbor's bamboo plant hangs in the middle of the road. Can I hit it with my car everyday until it dies?

So I have this neighbor who has a bunch of bamboo on his property. About a week ago, one of the plants started hanging into the middle of the road like this. It is perfectly at windshield height and goes halfway into our small, residential road; it essentially creates a one lane situation. Everyone drives slowly (<25 mph) on this road as it's small and there is no reason to go faster than that. I live at the dead end of this road and have to go by the bamboo plant every time I leave/return to my house.

Here's my problem: I have to get to work so early in the morning that it is pitch black out when I'm leave my house. There are no functioning street lights I forget that the bamboo is there and don't notice it until it's too late to safely move out of the way. Every morning I hit it with my windshield and it scares the daylights out of me. One of my town's senior police officers (I don't know his actual title) lives on my road and is fully aware of the hazard, yet nothing has happened so I don't think he's said anything to anyone. A few days ago, I called my town's non-emergency police number and they told me they would look into the matter. They're very busy and in the mean time, my parents (who I live with) said they could "deal with it" themselves. I really think this is a bad idea because if something bad happens to the rest of the bamboo plant, my parents are liable for the damages. On top of that, it's just not nice. This neighbor is super sketchy, so I'm not going to knock on his door and be like "Can you trim your plant please?"

My plan for now is to just keep hitting the cursed thing with my car every morning until it dies, mostly because I keep forgetting it's there. I'm not sure if this makes me liable for damages to the plant, though. Additionally, if my car were to get damaged by the bamboo plant, would my neighbor be liable for the damages to my car?