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Fast, Furious Racers Imperil The Rest Of Us

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By TOM JACKSON

tjackson@tampatrib.com

Published: April 1, 2009

Monday, 6:37 p.m. Sitting out a red light among other southbound motorists on Bruce B. Downs Boulevard.

Two sacks in the front seat. Middle American dinner for four. Windows open to the cooling evening air and the competing growls and squeaks of another rush hour nearing its conclusion.

At green, all else is drowned beneath the rumble of a small, black Honda coupe peeling away from the stop bar, followed immediately by the urgent hornet's buzz of a similarly diminutive red Toyota as it whips around me and falls into pursuit of the Honda.

Pocket rockets, in the vernacular. They're glamorized in this decade's gawdawful "Fast and the Furious" movie series, the latest of which is due out any moment. Souped-up mini-cars designed explicitly for (illegal) street racing, usually piloted by glowering clumps of stubble-chinned bad-attitude over-revved on the human jet fuel known as testosterone.

I suppress an ancient urge to arm myself with a semi-automatic paint gun for blasting these and other motoring scofflaws, the better to identify - with bright yellow splatters - those who reduce public thoroughfares to impromptu sprint tracks ... and killing fields. My internal monologue lays out a variety of unpleasant consequences, reminding me that this is a bad idea.

The Thrill Of It All

Instead, I mind my own pace and, as the racers vanish among late commuters, trailing acrid exhaust, I scan nearby traffic for the patrol car that, typically, is never around when one is needed.

Of course. Much of the thrill associated with street racing, participants have told others reporting on the phenomenon, is the chance they might get caught. That they rarely are merely feeds the beast, in spite of the frequency with which people are killed or maimed. See: Bollea, Nicholas.

Owing, possibly, to a lack of celebrity parentage - Bollea's dad is Hulk Hogan, the TV wrestler - less notice was paid as a trial began involving what prosecutors describe as another case of street racing turned tragic. Not in dispute is that Justin Tanoff, then 18, was speeding when he plowed his white Honda Civic into the Toyota Camry driven by Oknan Ziegler as she attempted to cross U.S. 19 from a thrift store parking lot. Ziegler was 62.

Details seem likely to make the difference in whether prosecutors can make their vehicular homicide charge stick. Witnesses describe a weaving race between Tanoff and Aaron Kukla. The defense says Ziegler failed to yield to oncoming traffic.

A Limp Response

Meanwhile, the Luis Rivera Ortega Street Racing Act, inspired by last year's death of an Orange County 15-year-old mowed down on his bicycle in an incident thought to be connected to street racing, maintains the pace of a tortoise in the state Legislature.

The bill is a modest, at best, reply to disciples practicing fast-and-furious behavior, increasing allowable fines and rising to the level of a felony (third degree) only after the third (!) caught-racing offense.

Sigh. We concede the reality of baby steps necessary to the lawmaking process. But when motorists start brawling over racers splattered by otherwise law-abiding citizens hoping to take back their streets, well, our legislators can't say they weren't warned.

Keyword: The Jax Files, for more of Tom Jackson's musings on the state of things.

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