Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Eade
Street racing is not new, at all. In my younger years, there was the Carling races from the Lady Jane (Lady Jane Donuts). (Before that, I’m sure there was another spot that had a set of lights and a straight length of wide pavement.) I don’t know how true it was, but there was always the expectation that the police would take their time getting there so that the ‘kids’ could have a bit of fun before being chased away. Straight-line, ‘drag’ racing was big back then.
So, yes, racing has always been in Ottawa. The differences, from my point of view, are that, in the (distant) past, the police would show up to send the kids home (i.e., the police were active in shutting things down) and high-speed weaving through traffic on highways seemed to be less prevalent. (Although Bankfield was a long, lonely road for high-speed ‘testing’ of a car, one or two runs was all you dared, lest the police showed up.)
I think that the comment about cars using bus-lanes is pertinent. This is the ‘Broken Window Theory’ in reverse-action. As police do less and less to prevent the seemingly minor offences, the more serious ones are encouraged. Civil disorder, and antisocial and scofflaw behaviour becomes normalized and accepted.
Young people have always found limited opportunities to have a bit of ‘fun’, but there was also the very real worry about police involvement. Now it looks as though that intimidation factor has dropped to almost nil. Racers don’t get a shot of adrenaline from getting in a quick ¼-mile race before the cops come. Now, it takes high-speed interplay with other vehicles on the roads to get the rush. That fear of failure has escalated from getting caught to losing a life.
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I was just going to reply something like this to Tesladom's comment that they just get a wrist-slap anyway.
When I was a kid I pushed the envelope on a few things but was never involved in anything serious and certainly no high-speed racing. Still, the idea of having an encounter with the police was a stressful proposition, even if it was just a wrist-slap (however you want to define that). I think most kids were the same back then and the idea that the cops would inevitably show up was part of the deterrent. Sure there were some kids back then who didn't care about the cops, getting fined or even going to jail. They have always existed. We know what usually happened to them in their lives.
The problem though is the growth of the latter demographic, when it starts to make up an increasingly large chunk of the younger population. Police invisibility and withdrawal definitely enables this evolution.
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