Beware the street racing epidemic

[Pritch]

Im just curious...i know there is a great representation of different ages and opinions on this forum so I want to ask the question....

Is "street racing" a problem or just the latest "public enemy" that the police and government is making to crack down on?

In my town, the police are convinced that there is an underground street racing scene. They cant find it, and they get very frustrated, so they ticket every spoiler, muffler and set of rims they see. Thing is, there is no street racing scene here.

There used to be, and I was a part of it, but for years now, nothing.


Is it just me or does anyone think it's overhyped and blown out of proportion?

Are we to assume that modified machines all go out racing?

[Crash]

You know this whole thing worries me Pritch. I'm 45 and maybe a little past being into tuning and street racing but my brain hasn't totally clapped out and I can still remember back to when I was young. Every generation likes to tinker with their vehicles, it's part of growing up. With me it was jacking up the rear, fitting wide wheels, small steering wheels and yes, even the furry dice!

I don't think that anyone should be "picked on" just because they want their vehicle to stand out a little. Cut them a little slack, many are as carefull with their creations as the guys like me in the classic cars. But sadly, there are always a few guy's that go a little nuts and cause trouble for the rest.

To give you an idea, a few weeks back I was following something on the 400 at a distance that looked a little strange. I sped up to see what it was. There was a motorcycle with cars all around him doing over a 100kph ON HIS BACK WHEEL??? The guy's a raving lunatic and was endangering everyone else around him with his death wish antics. If I had been a cop, I would have stopped him and ripped his licence up in front of him. I've raced moto cross and rode trials for years, I can ride on the back wheel pretty good, I even enjoy watching the professional stunt riders on TV. But to do it in trafic, it's a suicide stunt that should be outlawed. That guy is an idiot who gives motorcycling a bad name and brings the cops down on all decent bikers out there. He'll be dead soon, but all the rest of us will be paying for his stupidity for years to come.

Back to cars, the same thing goes. I just hope that with these new laws, the cops are trained well enough and are smart enough to be able to tell the difference between an enthusiast and an idiot. That's the funny thing really, idiots come in all shapes, all sizes and "all age groups".

If you look at a couple of recent Toronto "street racers", it was new Corvettes and Mercedes sports involved, basically guy's with smaller than average private parts and more money than brains.

Like most other reasonable thinking people, I don't want the roads to end up like "death race 2000" But I think that we should be looking at "Bad Driving, Full Stop". If I was in charge, I'd forget the money generating speds traps for a week or two and start pulling people for bad lane changing, following too closely, stuff like that. I might even bring in a law called "being in charge of a motor vehicle without a valid brain". In Toronto, that could bring in more revenue than any other ticket :lol: .

[Pritch]

Agreeed on the last note! Toronto drivers scare me. I love it in winter though, they all hug the slow lane with the blinkers on :P

[Crash]

Maybe I'm a little biased, because as everyone knows, the U.K. driving tests are really hard to pass but...

I've been here 16 years or so and I've had 3 accidents.

#1 A VW GTI driver who obviously knew the road tried to overtake 4 vehicles (including me) as I turned left into my driveway which is on a long straight after a bend in the road. Trashed his VW, hurt my Jag, HIS FAULT!

#2 A DRIVING INSTRUCTOR reversed out of a parking space at Tim Horton's right into me, HIS FAULT!

#3 Can you believe it, ANOTHER DRIVING INTRUCTOR reverses out of a parking space at Tim Horton's right into me, HIS FAULT, AND IT WASN"T EVEN THE SAME GUY!

Things which we can conclude from this...

Big car hurt little car!

Drinking Tim Horton's could not only be dangerous to your health but also, your cars.

When you see a driving instructors car with two people in it, you might be safer as maybe the instructor's not driving!

And the bigest one...Possibly our driving instuctors could do with a little more "driving instruction". We keep blaming the new driver's but maybe it's the people teaching them which we should be looking at. It could be a case of Monkey see, Monkey do!

If it was down to me, any driving instructor who had an accident which was their fault, would be red flagged, re-examined and maybe even lose their certification, that would sharpen them up!

[Pritch]

Interesting idea about driving instructors....

Lately its the very elderly I worry about. Im only 24, and Im not trying to be rude but this past two weeks alone, two major accidents caused by very old drivers between my place in the woods and our small town (about 20 mins on the highway) I drove past them all, cause they all had the road shut down in at least one lane.

1- ninety something lady rear ends kid in a saturn full speed, sending him to critical care for over a week. She "didnt see the car" stopped in front of her.

2- Someone driving a villager hops a curb in a turning lane and plows about 90 KMH into a city bus, id be surprised if anyone in the van lived judging by the wreckage.


3- Last summer a woman of 86 drove through a red light and into the side of my 240sx. I was able to avoid most of the collision, and instead of going through my passenger compartment i sacrificed the bumper, hood and fender instead. Her answer? "I didnt see the lights"

like..... i just think there are far more pressing issues than young alleged street racers. The police are more into "Fast and Furious" than anyone else as far as I can tell.

[Crash]

You've got a good point, I think that driving tests should not only be made harder but also given to people as that get older, as well as to new drivers.

Talking about crashes, look at what the car companies are doing today, and think about it. We are seeing more and more so called safety features. These are designed for us, so they say. Yet some of these are the same companies that over the years have had a pretty bad track record of caring about the buyers. Think about the company (we won't mention who) whose lawyer's worked out that it was cheaper to pay out the lawsuits than recall their vehicle's when poeple were dying as a result of a design fault.

Then think about what happens in a crash today. New vehciles are made to crumple on impact, then all the airbags deploy and the car gets wrote off because of the cost of replacing them. You then have to to go out and buy a new car, hmm! :?:

Today, cars are being made basically "idiot proof". It's kind of like, "don't worry how bad a driver you are, our new safety features will save your life in a crash". What I want to know is "should we have these idiots on the road". Maybe if we trained people to drive better, the rest of us wouldn't have to be paying for them all the time.

I have a master plan for when I'm put in charge of Canadian roads. Every vehicle will be required to have their steering wheel airbag replaced with a 8 inch metal spike, then we'll see how carefull people can drive :lol:

[Punisher]

It is tempting...when you know your car can go really fast to take someone on.....I have a new mantra......"RACING IS FOR THE TRACK ONLY!" Roads are for transportation!!!! I was trained at young drivers when I was 17 I'm now 38 and I have not been in a serious car accident yet.....YET! It is the other drivers that you have to look out for. I learned allot of really good tools from young drivers, my dad tells me that he would of taught me all his bad habits he he! So I guess the $70 he invested 20 years ago has paid off! I sometimes have to fight my desire to to blow some Mustang or Honda away as my little Asuna has lots of POWER! DOHC approx 150HP in a tini tiny little car!!! with LOTUS HANDLING!!! ANYWAYS MY MATRA REMAINS..... "RACING IS FOR THE TRACK!" 8)

BTW it is a very rare car it was only released in Canada one year 1993 :P

[Crash]

Good on you mate! your dead right about "Racing is for the track only".

I'm also glad to hear that you were well trained by Young Drivers, as that means one less person on the road that I have to worry about. The trouble is...it still leaves an awfull lot of drivers that we both still have to worry about eh!

Your dad may well have been right about teaching you his bad habits and $70 is peanuts if it helps save your life! But you should count yourself lucky because not all driving instuctors out there are up to the quality of yours.

You obviously enjoy your Asuna and I don't blame you "small cars, high hp, heaps of fun". You carry on enjoying it mate, drive safe, keep your eyes peeled for the idiots out there and keep repeating that "Mantra of yours", it's a good one!

[Punisher]

Ya it works...im probably gonna print up a little sign of it too! and add "speeding=traffic fines" :lol: there is only so much a radar detector can do...lol Protect myself(and others... and my pocket book too!) with not speeding!..... Hmmmmm? 8)

[Crash]

You make a good point there, television has a lot to answer for, what with films like "The fast and furious" etc. Then again, I'm old enough to remember the original "Mad Max", "Death race 2000" and stuff like that, so it has been going on for quite a while now.

There are lots of people that carry some blame, like the manufacturers who lead us to believe that their little 4 pot rollerskate will enable us to hurdle around corners like James Bond and pull the women as well as he can too, are these people deranged :shock:

Years ago, I was a headend trainman for CP rail. As part of our training we were shown actual railroad accidents. Believe me, when you have seen a man chopped in half between the knuckles of two rail cars, it's makes you VERY CAREFUL!!! Maybe we need stuff like that in driver training???

I'm a Motorcyclist (That's what we call ourselves in the UK, not Bikers). Over there, the Govt runs tv spots on bike-safety. Many show "actual accidents" with the permision of the relatives of course! Another shows a car trying to pull out of a side street, it's theme is "think once, think twice, think bike". The driver looks once, see's nothing, he looks again, nothing, then all of a sudden when he looks a third time...a motorcyclist appears from behind a lamp post. The moral is...a bike is so narrow that it was hidden from view purely by the post, if the driver hadn't looked again, there would have been a serious accident. This stuff is clever, and if our Govt really cared about road safety, they would spend some of the speeding fine money they rake in on stuff like this!!!

[apl16]

driving instructors...........teach how to pass the test, not how to drive.........tougher driving tests done every 5 years or so........different classifications on weight and horsepower..............basic driver license, basic car..............test old farts that see the need to drive monstrous motorhomes while trying to see past their cataracts...........tough test for SUVs..........they are too heavy and handle poorly............recipe for disaster

[TheCarGeek]

I was also one of this street racers... I even do drifting on most of my race.. But when I had an accident, street racing is out of my dictionary...

[Crash]

driving instructors...........teach how to pass the test, not how to drive.........tougher driving tests done every 5 years or so........different classifications on weight and horsepower..............basic driver license, basic car..............test old farts that see the need to drive monstrous motorhomes while trying to see past their cataracts...........tough test for SUVs..........they are too heavy and handle poorly............recipe for disaster

I don't often recomend anything, but a few weeks ago I was at a Ian Law Driving School event. It was his Car Control School and I was really just there as an observer. I was so impressed with him and his fellow instructors that I came home and told my wife and daughter "you're both taking that course this year"!

The full days course costs just $226.48 + GST and includes Lunch, a handbook and certificate (Personally, I think that the Govt should remove the taxes from anything which improves driver skills).

Think about it, you don't have to be Brain of the Month to work out that it's not a lot of money to learn driving skills which could one day save your life!

So, when you're next down at Crappy Tire drooling over chrome plated exhaust tips and go-fast stripes, think again... they don't look quite so cool when the car they're on is sitting in the ditch up-side-down!!

Check out his website at www.carcontrolschool.com

One day in the future, when you've survived to be old and grey, you'll thank me for this :wink:

[Crash]

You know youngster's will always be youngsters. I might be 40..somthing now, but I can still remember back to when I first got my license.

In fact, I was lucky to get it. I had an Mk Escort van, which was "jacked up" at the rear, wide wheels...bigger on the front than the back, and a steering wheel so small that your thumbs nearly touched. Oh, and of course...I had the "furry dice"!!!

My old test examiner took one look at the vehicle and said "is this vehicle road-worthy"??? He then went on to say "if it was up to me, I'd fail you now, because you can't control the vehicle properly with a steering wheel that small".

When I look back, he was probably right!

The thing is "we all did things like that when we were young", even my dad who's in his 70's did stuff to his first car. It's all part of "growing up", the kids today are just trying to do what we did back in our day...trying to make their vehicle look different from everyone else's.

Most the kids in the lowered Honda's with the loud exhausts have little four cylinder put-puts under the hood, the exhausts are actually sapping power on most. Then there's the fact that they have "all their money" invested in their cars, and most can't afford full ins cover, so if they have an accident "they're back to walking".

Fair enough, there are a few crazy ones out there with nitrous-oxide and stuff like that, and I think that this should be stopped, but the police should be aware that the majority of the “funny looking rides” are not like that. Most spend their time harmlessly cruising around slowly with their arm out of the window trying to look cool, and annoying us old-uns with their loud music!!! (I have a fair old stereo in my car, so I give them a quick blast of David Bowie to remind them that they didn’t originate that idea)!

I think that we older folk should encourage the youngster’s to express their individuality, it’s healthy. I also think that we should encourage them to take advanced driving courses, because with the roads the way they are nowadays that’s a good idea for anyone, especially the new drivers.

One of the biggest things that I think we as parents should do...is not buy our kids fast flash sport models, just because we didn't have one when we were young, and we want to give our kids "everything that we didn’t have"!!

A lot of the so-called street-racer accidents have been caused by youngster's driving near new expensive machines which their parents brought for them "or lent them"!!

I’ll tell you a true story to explain what I mean. When I was a dealer, I sold a young man at university an old Land Rover (the type with the tire on the hood that you see in all the old films). His dad was quite wealthy and could have brought him a new Porsche if he wanted too, but the boy wanted the old classic. He told me that at school “he was top dog” because everyone loved his unique vehicle.

Another customer’s son wanted one too, but his dad said that it was old and would be unreliable! So he brought him a fancy new Volkswagen. He had a serious accident and wrote the car off with three friends in it only two weeks after getting it.

He should have let the kid buy the old Land Rover, they’re as tough as old boots, and they can only manage to get over 100kph downhill with the wind behind them!! But as far as “cool looks go” they’re hard to beat.

I say “teach youngster’s to be smart about car choices, get them good training, and then...just let them be normal youngsters”!!

[apl16]

good point, crash...........but not all driving schools are the same.........there are excellent ones but they are not all good..........the average person out there sucks behind the wheel...........few signal........many do it at the wrong time...........its not very fun here in the greater van area..............i have to commute right now but in the future i'll live very close to my work...............i do recommend defensive driving classes.............may save your life

[Crash]

I'm glad to hear that it's not only Toronto that has bad drivers, it's only fair that they be spread out over the entire country :lol:

Seriously though, the driving standards are getting worse everywhere if you want my opinion, and you're right about "not all driving instructors being good". I have had three accidents in this country, one, an over eager youngster, the other two "driving instructors reversing into me in parking lots" :roll: It makes me wonder "who taught them how to drive"!!!!

I think that some of the blame must fall on the advertising market. Everywhere you go now there are billboards, we even have huge video advertising screens in downtown TO now. It is pretty hard not to be distracted by them whilst driving by.

Couple that, with having a cell phone in your ear, a Big Mack in your mouth, a can of Coke wedged between your knees, whilst you try to watch the latest blockbuster hit on the dash mounted video screen and you're kind of asking for trouble!!!

Of course, nobody worries because our cars are chocked full of "safety features nowadays"!!! My answer to the problem is simple..."replace everyone's steering wheel airbag with a six inch stainless steel spike...then we will see just how safely people can drive" :wink: