CA cops crushing street racers

Driving is a privilege, but destruction of personal property is basically 2 wrongs, which don't make a right.

Those people choose to break the law and act irresponsibly. Its not very smart to take your only means of transportation, tune it to within a micron of reliability and then race it at extreme speeds on roadways filled with unsuspecting fellow drivers.
 
The courts are just doing for these people what they are attempting to do themselves: destroy their vehicles.
 
I'd rather have a street racer's car in a junk yard than plowed into my wife's Altima when she's on her way home from work one night.
 
Here's a novel idea: GO TO A RACE TRACK.
 
If you choose to break the law, then so be it, but don't whine when you have to suffer the consequences. It might seem harsh to some, but it seems even more ridiculous to put someone right back in the car that they committed the crime with. That would be like giving a murderer his gun back after he gets paroled.
 
A car can kill people. Racing one illegally on the street is idiotic. If that's your only means of transportation, then why would you take those risks with it, even without the threat of law enforcement crushing your car hanging over your head?
 
I fail to see how this is a serious infringement on our inalienable rights. Rather it seems like a firm punishment that will hopefully discourage dangerous behavior. Racing is fine when the people in danger are willing and accepting. But Its wrong to put other people in danger.

Other articles I've read have put this at a different level. Basically, they'll crush your car if you have aftermarket items which the police PRESUME you'll use to race with. So if I get stopped by a cop in my S2000 and it has lightweight rims and lowered suspension, they have the right to crush it. Even though I've never raced in my life and my wife and I got married in the car...
 
This is a case of giving the authorities too much power. I hate what this country is becoming.

crowb,
 
There's no one in their right mind that would say street racing isn't illegal, careless, idiotc, and wreckless. No one is contesting that. I'm certainly not.
 
The problem that we have here is that there's a HUGE blanket on the entire issue that could (and most certainly does) cover people who can't afford to lose a ride which could potentially do more harm than them just losing their car. They could lose their employment, their house/apartment, and (in an extreme case) break up a family because of all that. The lives of people are at stake on both ends: on the street because of illegal racing, and those doing the racing and their families. It's not logical nor rational to cost someone else their life and well-being in place of someone elses life or well-being.
 
This practice is way too extreme. Jail time, hefty fines, impoundment of vehicles, and caring people that want to help the criminals change their attitudes about what their doing is more than enough to either deter, completely stop, or change people from street racing. Crushing a persons car is NOT like giving a murderer their weapon back no matter how you slice it. Two VERY different issues. The only thing crushing the car will do is create divisity and animosity between civilians and law enforcement. This is not the solution.

Have the current enforcement solutions worked?
Is street racing being diminishing by the usual suspending licenses, impounding vehicles, etc?
 
otherwise, crowb pretty much nailed it for me. To repeat: Street Racers, Get your vehicles to a RACE TRACK where you can drag and spin out all you like!
 
I would add that just __having__ equipment on a vehicle (provided equipment falls within the normal laws of vehicle use and registration) should _not_ give law enforcement people the right to crush the car. Crushing should only be used for the most extreme cases (a repeated violation, homicide, etc.
 
Perhaps the ultimate answer to street racing will be virtual reality games, with direct neural stimulation of muscles, balance centers and other human senses that lets participants believe they are __really racing__and crashing into each other (that stimulation would be limited, or else a "crash" could really "off" someone). But that senario's a few years away yet.

Traffic law - the aspect of law in our country with the LOWEST requirements for burden of proof. And now, penalties completely overblown for the crime. This could happen to any of us (who look a certain way) by doing nothing more than accelerating at a green light with the car next to us accelerating too.
 
Street racing deaths are a drop in the bucket compared to those caused by other driving practices. But politically, it's an easy target and that's the only reason for any of this. "From my cold dead hands," I say.

It's important to note that those cars crushed have stolen parts. But I agree with crowb, and am fine with going one step further. Not only are street racers dangerous and can use stolen parts, but modified street racers also tend to be obnoxiously loud and completely ugly. Taste counts, people. Go ahead and crush'em I say. Then again, I'm also all for locking up graffiti taggers for life and forcing Hummer drivers to commute to work on a unicycle 180 days per year.
 
I have one caveat, though. It seems like a waste to crush them without stripping them for parts. The state could get money that could be used to improve California's horrible education system or roads (or more likely, just pay for more traffic cops). Crush away!

I agree they shouldn't crush a car just for looking like a tuner. I suppose that in my mind I was picturing an example of a multiple offender or someone caught in the act, possibly on police dash mounted video. I guess I was thinking that lives were being put in danger and property damaged. In that case, crush it.
 
If someone accelerates quickly at a green light, well...who hasn't done that?
 
But, and I still stick to this, if you can't afford to lose your car, your family, or your job (and who can) then you shouldn't take part in acts which can directly or inadvertantly lead to such outcomes.
 
I do not condone the arbitrary impounding and crushing of cars based simply on the look of a car or what some traffic cop thinks due to a hunch. But if you get busted doing seriously dangerous street racing, maybe you should lose your car. I see no problem with that. If that threat keeps people from participating, then all to the good.
 
The fact that injuries, fatalities, or property damage resulting from street racing are a "drop in the bucket" is a fair observation. But its no less dangerous and no less illegal just because it adds up to a low body count. It could be that deaths resulting from street racing are low because its not widely practiced. Maybe its not widely practiced because people don't want to risk smashing up their only car or having it crushed by the authorites : ).
 
But I do agree there are other bigger problems on the road. Drunk driving for one. I'd like to see the book thrown at drunk drivers. I lost a friend that way once and its just sickening.
 
Perhaps a more fitting punishment would be to put the street racers into Trabants or Yugos. Sort of like those ankle bracelets they make some parolees wear.
 
Now that would be funny.

But it's such a variable penalty - $300 if I had raced my old Sentra, tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars if someone's racing something more expensive. It's grossly disproportional to just about any other crime/sentence combination. And frankly, 135 alleged street racing-related deaths in 2001 out of 42,196 doesn't strike me as warranting the hardest sentence in all traffic law. Sorry to belittle the issue... but it IS little.
 
And never mind that if you're an auto journalist or car development guy in a big car company, your clout goes UP if you street raced, but only if it was in the 60s. Seriously, all the stories of what young people could do back then just make me angry... no more make out points, no more racing even in abandoned areas, cruising's illegal in an increasing number of cities... and it's not just cars. Little kids can't play on monkey bars anymore, schools are banning tag, you can't go play in creeks anymore... all you can do is stay home and play video games but you get criticized for that, too.
 
Legal tracks are rare; NIMBY makes them hard to build and is threating to close down Altamont right now. People avoid them anyway because police are known to harass any car that looks modified going to an event.
 
All I see is a society led by people more interested in staying alive than in living...

Very well-argued points.

When I lived in California (Santa Maria to be exact), the cops would come out every Friday night and demand tuners pop their hoods. If the engine wasn't original, they would impound it. While they would run a check to see if it was stolen, the burden of proof was on you to prove you purchased it legally from a legal establishment. In most cases, these kids would buy a B18 from their buddy who wanted an H22 or something. You had to trace it back to the original vehicle and get written authorization from the current owner for you to have the engine.
It wasn't just engines either, though that was usually the entering argument. If you had rims, you need proof of sale. If you had aftermarket anything, you need a proof of sale.
California has gotten so out of hand. I bet you those "stolen" parts were, in fact, just parts no receipt was provided for after it was impounded.
 
And as far as streetracing goes, it is NOT the big killer people make it out to be. I imagine that 135 figure is not all it's cracked up to be. How many out of that 135 were also alcohol-related? Drug-related? Mechanical failure-related? I could cruise down the 101 at 85mph and suddenly blow a tire. I guarantee you California would label that a streetracing incident. It's important to put this in perspective.
 
Also, race tracks are indeed hard to come by these days. There's 1 in the entire state of Montana, and it's not really that good. Also, when you do find one, it's expensive. It's expensive because insurance and city ordinances have gotten out of control.

You miss that Santa Maria tri-tip estreka?

lol, about as much as I miss the winter months up here. ;-) TX is the best place to get BBQ. Oh, speaking of which, there's a BBQ place in Lompoc (Mad Max, I believe). The owner is from TX. Good cobbler.

"All I see is a society led by people more interested in staying alive than in living..."
 
Best point in the whole tread. I don't believe street racing is particularly dangerous anyway. I would argue the cruising, in various degrees of association with street racing is multiple times more dangerous. This is from first hand experience. I've gone out a handful of times with a friend of mine to the "Hanover Circuit" as we call it, as more of an observer than a participant. With people trying to talk to each other while cruising beside each other, haphazard turnarounds in the Sheetz parking lot, and keeping an eye out for cops instead of on the road, there is the danger. Compare that to accelerating full throttle in a straight line, hmmm, doesn't seem so bad. Yes I realize there are fatal accidents, even at drag strips, but when was the last time you saw a 15 second Integra spin out and start flipping while going in a straight like? Heck, the fashion in which a typical driver around here merges onto a highway at 50mph when the traffic is flowing at 70 is more dangerous than street racing. When will we ever crack down on the poor driving of the masses that's really killing people?