I know its fun, but its time to stop

D

denn454

turbo swimmer
Joined
Mar 2, 2003
last friday up at bandimere for the last club clash i was setting there watching the races after i lost (I had an .005 light, but the other guy ran his dial in, sucks when that happens) like always they are trying to give people reasons to spend $30 to go up to their track and race, usually talking about how dangerous street racing is, and like always i blow it off figuring there just wanting money. anyways there talking about 2 kind out racing in a maxima and a sonoma, at the time everyone was in the hospital, 2 serious and one crytical.

on the way home from the track i catsh up to a guy in my club and by some stroke of luck we catch a light and race from there, i go al over the road, there was a bit of water and the ground was cold, horrible for traction. so i'm smoking up the intersection doing everything i can to keep it straight, just being an idiot, first off for doing it after i proved at the track i have a faster car, and then by not letting out once i realized there was no way the tired would grab.

sunday night i go out and cruse around looking for someone to race, didnt' find anything, but i wasted 4 gallons in the process.

so today i get to school and my friend comes up to me and asked me if i heard about jimmy. i didn't know what he was talking about, i only know of one jimmy, he doesnt' go to my school, i've talked to him a few times and i'm good friends with his girlfriend who i swim with. he goes on to tell me about this wreck that happend out on federal, then i remember hearing about that at the track, but i thought everyone was ok, and i didn't know anyof them anyways. turns out he was the one crytical person, he was in a coma for 2 days and died on sunday.

The police say they were only doing about 80, and thats a very straight road that you could easly do 80 on with no problems. how it could come to this i don't know.

I know how much fun it is to pull up next to a riced out honda, or a $40,000 vette and blow their doors off, but is it really worth it? don't get me wrong i'll be up at the track next season as often as i can afford to go, but i'm not going to be out on the streets ooking for any races. as much as i hate to do it i'll set there at a light with some guy in a mustang next to me reving his engine and i'll just let him go now. its just not worth it. I hope you'll all think about this too, i don't want to spoil your fun, and if you want to race then thats your choice, but think about it.
 
experience has nothing to do with it, its the traffic on streets and other people driving, remember that conditions are the track are optimal to go fast, that is why the track is prep and everything, on the other hands street are not, you have parked cars,oil,water glass, dogs and cats running in front of you , in fact you never know what will happen on the streets not to mention the cops looking for you, street racing is plain dumb stupid , i had my share of them and i can say that i am also done, if i ever wanna go fast i will pay my $20.00 at the track and have all the safe fun in the world, even older guys with experience in driving have accidents in the streets, it does not matter what age you are an accident can happen at any time, that is why they call them accidents and by racing on the streets you increase your chances of having a bad one 10 fold, you have made the right choice by giving it up, just my 2 cents, on another note my condolences to you friends family.
 
i didn't know the guy too well,i think he was in a gmc sonoma, from what i heard peopel thought it was a camero the way it was smashed up. the other car was a maxima, that could have been his i really don't know for sure.

he was 17 i think, probably not a ton of experence, but while that does play a role in it, there is no one with enough experence to get out of some situations, look at how many accidents mario andretti has been in, thats probably the most experienced driver in the world, i know we dont' drive at 200+ mph indy cars and the comparison is a streth. I do think it is errogant to say i have enough experence to do dumb things, if you were an excelent shooter would you play russian roulette? hell no thats stupid! I'm sorry to be like this, but it really shook me up quite a bit, and opend my eyes too.



I just found some links about it http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_2343211,00.html

http://www.9news.com/storyfull.aspx?storyid=19698

scarry stuff....
 
Stories like this really sober me up when it comes to playing around on the street.

I have a buddy that got busted last year and he shared his story with me and all the problems it created for him, after that night it easy cruzin for me. It's just not worth it!

Frank
 
ANY TIME YOU RACE on the street, you are taking the chance of killing yourself, or someone else. But we do it anyway? Don't know why that is - but it sure is fun!:D As long as you decide you can live with the consequences, go ahead and do it. Just don't make someone else's mind up for them...............
 
it is fun, i've been temped quite a few times to race a few people, i wish the track hadn't closed for the winter. anytime you drive on the street theres a chance of killing yourslef, but racing really increases thoes chances. and i'm not trying to change anyones minds, i think at the end of one of my posts i said its your choice and i'm not going to stop anyone, or something like that.
 
I hear ya........ nothing like a good scare to make you think long and hard. One day, a Satuday, I had to work late. I get home and am thinking about getting the car back in street trim (gas, tires), to hit the cruise spot. I'm feelin pretty lazy. Aww, I'll just stop by for a minute to see what's going on (on slicks). Well anyway this is right after I switch injectors, and converted to ME-R. I had the car gassed up and ready to go to the track but I had to work. So here I am, in a parking lot, with the car all dressed up and nowhere to go. A little smack talking back and forth and that's all that was needed to talk me into a run. A black ZO6 with a 150 shot that I have cooked in street trim. He has another 50 shot on top of that now, and is convinced he is hot stuff. That's cool, This Mafless deal has made the car a new animal and he does not know about any changes made on my car. We line up and go. The car hooked hard, and I am glad I jumped a couple of cars out quickly, cause I could not keep the damn thing out of his lane, It just wanted to pull left. Okay, so that was flukey. I give it another shot against a sprayed Nova, mid 11's. Good full run,till We get into 3'rd and I catch a groove in the road or somethin and it was pulling me off the road hard. We were moving pretty fast and it scared me to death.I thought I was going into the ditch for a roll for sure. I AM SO LUCKY I DID NOT LOSE IT. The moral of the story? Street racing on slicks a bad idea? Yes, but more like just plain street racing period is a bad idea. I need some self control.
 
ya street racing is very dumb but not everyone like to pay 30 bucks to maybe get in 3 passes on a lousy slippery track. thats how it is here on street nights at NED. tons and tons of cars all trying to race in a 4 hr time period. no thanks.
 
As long as you decide you can live with the consequences
Click to expand...

How do you decide to live with the potential consequence of killing someone else via street racing?

"I know street racing is wrong, and that I could kill myself or others through my own gross negligence, but I've accepted the fact that this might happen, and can live with the consequences of possibly killing the mother of 3. As such, I feel better about street racing and getting my kicks".

Something like that?
 
Everyone will die eventually. It's all planned out. If they were drag racing and died, or if they were crossing an intersection and another driver hit them. They might have been pumping gas and got popped in the cranium.....

...Think about this. Whenever you hear about someone dying from congested heart failure due to unhealthy dietary choices, how many of us say "damn, I'm never eating at McDonalds again" or "nah, I'll pass on those greasey fries" when you're at the race track and hungry. I understand what you're saying denn454, it's quite common to feel this way as described in your post after the death of someone envolved in such acts as most of us commit to. However, I will state again. We are all going to die wheather it's a car crash, gunshot wound, heart failure, cancer, I can go on and on.....car crashes and gunshot wounds are most of the time quicker to the point of death.

Moral of the Story: Life is all planned out for us, so don't feel too special.


:) :) :) :) :) :)
 
i agree to some extent. we all will die, thats part of life, if we didn't de life would be pretty boring, we would have no reason to go do anything, and there would be a lot of really old people around;). I won't think twice about going out in the middle of no where, where i know there is no traffic and burn some rubber and have fun by myself. i still do that and i'm not planning on stoping, if somethign happens its probably my time and as much as i'd like to prevent that theres not much that can be done about it, once your experation date is up, thats it. I guess if you really belive in destiny it woudl be ok to go out and race in crowded streets risking the lifes of others figuring that if you hit and kill them its their tme too. I don't take that thought that seriously, and i'm keeping the stupid stuff to myself where i won't hurt anyone else in the unfortunate event that something bad woudl happen. so i guess what i'm saying is have fun, risk your own life if your confortable with it, but leave other people out of it.
 
Everyone will die eventually. It's all planned out. If they were drag racing and died, or if they were crossing an intersection and another driver hit them. They might have been pumping gas and got popped in the cranium.....

...Think about this. Whenever you hear about someone dying from congested heart failure due to unhealthy dietary choices, how many of us say "damn, I'm never eating at McDonalds again" or "nah, I'll pass on those greasey fries" when you're at the race track and hungry. I understand what you're saying denn454, it's quite common to feel this way as described in your post after the death of someone envolved in such acts as most of us commit to. However, I will state again. We are all going to die wheather it's a car crash, gunshot wound, heart failure, cancer, I can go on and on.....car crashes and gunshot wounds are most of the time quicker to the point of death.

Moral of the Story: Life is all planned out for us, so don't feel too special.








So your saying if you were street racing and ended up killing a family driving home from a night out you would not feel a bit guilty because you figure it was your destiny to kill them and theres nothing you could do about it?????? hmmmmm must be nice to not have a conscience. Me, I would believe that if I made the decision to race then I would be responsible because if I would have not, they would still be alive but I guess thats a pretty silly point of view.:D :D :D
 
Its just a shame that John Bandimere has the audacity to charge 30 bucks to race. Thats just insane!

Having been to many tracks around the Southwest, I think that SAR in Marion, Texas is a much better track and it costs half the price to race there. For people who go out on the weekends wanting some action, it is much less of a hit to the wallet to spend 15 bucks to race all night. I think if Bandimere wasn't so damn greedy that Denver might have a little less of a problem with Street Racing.

I'm not trying to blame Bandimere for the street racing deaths, but as a race track owner, he has a duty to encourage all interested parties to race safely on a sanctioned track. Not charging 30 bucks would be a good way to start. Its too bad that you Denver folks have to deal with that.
 
you have no idea how much greed there is up there. get past the $30 entry fee for test and tune, $5 for a gallon of 100 unleded, $5 for a bottle of pop, and all of that stuff. I used to do jr. drag racing when i was younger (8-12 i think) anyways someone wanted to open up a little 1/8 mile track for jr's only. no big deal, bandimers doesnt' really like the jr's anyways, how much of a crowd do they draw, they only give them the nhra minimum of 10 races a year anyways. so this guy we had known for a while goes to buy a tree and all the timming stuff to open up his own track, and you'll never guess who owns compulink the big timming company that makes all the trees, john bandimeres brother (some family member anyways) so bandimere finds out about this new track and puts their foot down on it. they refeust to sell them any timming equipment, at this time compulink was about all that was out there. and then gets the nhra involved over safty issues, the track is a road race track, we were going to race on the back stretch, that was conviently about 1/4 mile. turns out thats not long enough if you ever wanted to run a car down in the 4's and 5's. have you ever heard of a jr dragster running thoes kind of times??? of corse not!!! there was a 9.49 index at that time anyways. so they got the nhra out there trying to shut them down thinking it was going to be open to anyone, which it wasn't. the track also wasn't perfectly flat, they did everythig they could do to shut the track down. oh, by the way its about 50-60 miles away from bandimere anyways. the track ran for a season or 2 but bandimere ended up finding all kinds of little things and in the end they made these poor guys broke trying to run a little 1/8 mile track for kids to race at. talk about wrong.

if you go to sun honda, performance wheel and tire, and a few other places you can get free tickets to test and tune, i don't know where the'll be avaliable at next season.

i really do hate that track, i take that back, i love the track, probably one of the better tracks i could ask for but the people who run it are greedy bastards.
 
The thing that sux down here is we have 1 track for a poplation of well over 5 million people. Test n tune is only $15 but you have to drive 60-90 miles and then there are over 500 cars trying to get a few runs in.

There is all kinds of media attention on the street racing, and they have past new laws for harsher punishment, but nothing is being done about another track down here. The politicians are meeting with clubs saying "what can we do to cut down on the street racing". We tell them to build another track. They say "what can we do to cut down on the street racing." :rolleyes:
 
if they want to cut down on street racing, new laws aren't going to cut it. maybe if they suspect you of racing they impound your car, that would scare some people away, but 1 some peopel would think they can jsut outrun the cops and get by with it, they'll keep racing. or 2, it will be abused, racing is in the eye of the cop, maybe you just have a heavy foot, the cop might not see it like that, so a law like that would never pass, or shouldn't ever pass anyways.

the answer is a safe controlled place for people do race. I'd GLADLY pay $50 to go race at a track (provided i get a lot of runs, nice track etc.) insted of racing on the street. i'm sure a lot of people would agree with me. not only is it safer, but theres no question who won or lost, its there on a little piece of paper. no getting a head start, no cheating, just a lot more fun. and theres no worrys of getting busted. the only worry is breaking stuff, but that happens on the street too. If i were a big politition with some power and my city had street racing problems, or even street racing you bet i'd do everything in my power to get a track built.

Its really not that dificult. theres a little "track" up near the colordao nebraska border, jewlsberg if anyone's heard of it. its a race track on the weekends, and airport durring the week, and occasionaly on the weekends too. they shut down the track everyone and then to let planes take off and land. just a little redneck race track, but its a blast! there are thousands of small municipal airports all across the country that would make perfect drag strips, all they need is a timming system and insurence, there really isn't any need for nhra ir ihra sanction, if its just a test and tune only track, and frankly i have more fun doing that than bracket racing anyways.

sorry for going off on a rant here but thats something i'd love to see, everyone racing at a track, not on the streets.
 
I've been a fireman for 14 years and have seen many innocent people injured and killed because of a moron behind the wheel. Most recently I spent over an hour with my coworkers disentagling a deceased pregnant woman because some half-witted idiot in a Camaro SS that lost control of his car.

Street racing is for brain dead self centered morons - period. Those of you who may disagree - please get back to me when you have a wife and children riding around in a car.

IMO street racers are just as bad as idiots who climb behind the wheel intoxicated.

The Germans have a saying " Too soon old...Too late smart".
 
I agree with you about crazy driving of any type, but have you seen an accident like you describe at the last half mile of a deadend street, like in an industrial park somewhere? I have seen and perhaps raced in some that were well organized races, with spotters at the 3/4 mile distant stop sign, that I believe were as safe as possible. The serious street races around here have no big crowds around, and want no other types of excitment right then except racing.

Jim
 
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