[Flofocus]

Yeah, it is touchy. Just so everyone knows, I dont support street racing at all, but I do enjoy letting my car lose once in a while (both on track and on the street, responsibly, and there is such thing). And what I do out on the country roads with freinds, going over the posted speed limit by no more than 20km/hr would be considered street racing. Even if the closest thing I could kill if I lost control is a cow.

Heres an article that was sent to one of the local Ottawa baord admin's

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Thanks to Cst. Parent for forwarding this to me.


Auto racing danger not a teenaged problem


Subhead: It's the "regular folks" who are causing the crashes


You fear the menacing street racing teens with shiny cars and powerful motors who wait for the light to turn red before disappearin in a cloud of howling burnt rubber.


The police say those kids should be more afraid of you.

The 30 road fatalities we average each year in Ottawa doesn't have anything to do with hotroding teens. Rather, it's the office worker weaving in and out of traffic trying to get the edge on every other driver or doing everything but paying attention to the road.

Constable Christian Parent, of the Ottawa Police Service, says that after spending years working with teens interested in racing he has come to the conclusion that the real threat on the roads is the average driver who drives too fast or doesn't pay attention.

"It just seems a little easier for the general public to point at a shiny car with chrome wheels rather than point the finger at themselves," said Parent.

"When you think about morning rush hour, you will see regular folks on their way into work doing 20 or 25 kilometres over the speed limit, on the cell phone, trying to rush through amber and red lights while tailgating and eating breakfast."

A few years ago Parent decided to study crash statistics to see if racing was a problem in the Ottawa area. He found that in the previous 10 years only one crash could be blamed largely on street racing. Three other fatalities involved racing but alcohol was considered the primary cause of those deaths.

Nevertheless, he saw a need to educate teens. He set up a program where teens would come to the Capitol City Speedway to see hot rods and listen to a sobering message designed to keep them from losing their licence, demerit points, vehicle, or worse, their life. As a result of running this program several times over the past few years fellow officers report a drop in racing incidents.

Even so, since Ottawa Police started collecting data on racing complaints last July, only 20 complaints have arisen and all but one were noise complaints. Just one person complained about being overtaken by racing cars while being at the center of a potentially danger situation.

So Parent now talks about how racers are created by parents whose example to their children involves speeding and other dangerous driving habits.

"In school zones, still today, you see mostly mothers driving their children to school in the 40 kilometre school zone doing 85 kilometres per hour. The people complaining about the teenagers are the people who create them by never following the rules themselves."

Although police generally believe they do not have a racing problem there are reports of cars revving up their engines at stoplights and racing when the light turns green. Police are also aware that racers in their twenties gather occasionally in mostly semi-rural areas on predominantly empty stretches of road to race.

"Don't get me wrong, its illegal. But these aren't the people in our fatalities," said Parent.
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We need more cops like this guy. He's always at car events supporting the 'bring it to the track' and posts once in a while on the local boards.