Greetings, below is a quick sample article based on a personal hobby. If you find my style of writing attractive please feel free hire me as I am self motivated and can write to most topics.
One of the great American past times is hot rodding. Souped up cars and the racing culture that goes with them have been with us for decades. However America's highways are no longer the wide open expanses strips of blacktop they once were. The number of cars on the road combined with the ever increasing amounts of power a racer can tweak from his motor have created a public crisis.
From the origins of Nascar as moonshiners, to Hollywood movies like Smoky and the Bandit, Gone In 60 Seconds and Fast and the Furious the myth of running full bore through the streets has created a mythos that is killing people across the country. Sometimes its just the racers and their passengers, but often innocents get caught in the middle of a race gone wrong and have to pay the ultimate price.
Adding to the mix is an ever increasing array of new cars packing serious power straight from the factory, and a plethora of cheap, easy to install power adders. There has never been more horsepower on the streets of America. With so much power so readily available, to so many people, from local speed shops to the internet power adders anyone can be driving a race car.
Law enforcement efforts to stop street racing are fighting a rising tide. Especially since videos of law officers engaging in street racing can be readily found on the internet. All law enforcement really accomplishes is the relocation of the racers in a dangerous game of hide and seek at hide speed, with a few extra dollars for local coffers thrown in for good measure. Enforcement will not solve the problem, only access to tracks and peer pressure from other racers will.
The only real solution is to open more race tracks to the public and to do it more often. A quick informal survey of almost any weekend gathering of gear heads and tuners will reveal a desire to take it to the track. However, these same people who want to take it to the track often lack access to one in most cases. Fixing this lack of access offers the best solution to the street racing crisis. Yet, getting more tacks built or open to the public is a serious challenge.
Some other benefits to tracks is that most do not allow passengers. If a wreck does occur the number of people involved is smaller. Plus tracks often require safety gear like helmets, have walls to contain the wrecks to the track and away from bystanders and/or have emergency personal on site. tracks have so much going for them, except local support.
For a track to be effective it needs to be close enough to the major cities where the street racers hangout. yet this often causes a NIMBY (not in my backyard) reaction from local residents. Besides noise and traffic concerns, property prices are often an impediment to opening new tracks. That is why the government must play a role in the issue.
Local and state governments often have surplus land they could donate, and they control zoning, taxing and licensing regulations and requirements. Public-private ventures offer perhaps the best avenue to the creation of new tracks. However local governments, quick to crack down on street racing and to collect the fines, seem to have little interest in actually fixing the problem. Until they do, watch out, an out of control street race might be coming to a neighborhood near you.
