Jim Kenzie's Solution

[13inches]

http://www.wheels.ca/article/29271

Solo racing is as safe as church; the most damage you can do is bust up an orange plastic pylon.

Make these over-hormoned guys – it is massively a male thing – face off against guys and women who know how to drive.

Get their clocks, and their hot Mustangs or whatever, cleaned by someone driving a six-year old Mitsubishi Lancer.

Embarrass the hell out of them.

Cut their egos down to size.

Like hitting a stubborn mule over the head with a two-by-four, we'd only be trying to get their attention.

If we could accomplish that, maybe we'd get them to understand that you can't begin to get the most out of your car on public roads, never mind that it is insanely dangerous and inconsiderate.

Maybe we'd raise their adrenaline threshold to the point where they could only get their jollies on the track. I can give you one example of where this worked – me.

And maybe, just maybe, we'd teach them how to drive.

[George]

My response from another board:

I think the idea of sentencing them to participate in a sanctioned motor sport event is stupid, typical over the top newspaper stuff.

Why should we have to put up with these assholes at our track days, race days or even an autocross event for that matter. The concept is totally unworkable for numerous reasons and it’s simply not going to happen.

The Kenzie article is grandstanding in it's own way IMO and there's other worthless ideas in it as well which I can't be bothered getting into.

This quote from one of the letters made more sense to me:

1. Better analytics on real causes of accidents and fatalities. When I look at police-supplied reports, they are about as sophisticated as a school paper from my 5-year-old.

Fact is, driver error and driver distractions and poor driver skills cause far more collisions than any "street racer" phenomenon.

2. After step 1 is completed, align the focus of our police and our laws to the real leading causes of accidents.

3. Avoid depending on monetary fines, they only hurt a portion of the population. Licence suspensions or jail time works best.

4. Outlaw driver distractions such as cell phone use (as many countries have), and add other distractions such as car-driving coffee drinkers, lunch eaters, make-up appliers, radio fiddlers, presentation reviewers, etc.

Another response from the same thread containing an article that at least makes sense:

Car crushing is a stupid
solution
A-G’s proposal
could turn collectors into
criminals
DAVID GRAINGER
ReincarnationCanWest News Service david@guildclassiccars.com
Ihave

just heard Ontario’s attorney-general say in a report that people who spend thousands of dollars to fix up their cars and customize them are wasting their money. The reason? The province can and will seize cars deemed to be equipped with racing components and destroy them, even if no charges have been laid.

Wow! This is wrong on so many levels and more than just a little scary. I am hoping the attorney-general is merely pontificating to get media attention after the frenzy over the horrendous death of a tractor-trailer driver allegedly caused by two young men racing on Highway 400.

Street racing is heinous and, if a driver is apprehended, tried and found guilty of racing, then perhaps his or her car should be seized and crushed — or auctioned for charity. But, to take a car without legal process and destroy it seems to be setting a terribly dangerous precedent, one that nobody in this province’s government seems to have the wisdom or common sense to realize.

Who should decide if a car should be crushed — the police? If that is the case, then we can save a lot of money by eliminating the courts, judges and lawyers and have the police make all the decisions.

Sorry, but as much as I respect the police, it chills me to think that a police officer has the power to take my car from me and have it crushed.

What about drunk drivers? This is an even more serious and common offence. If a person with a customized car can have it taken away and crushed without recourse, then that rule has to apply to drunk drivers. As soon as someone blows over, crush the car — no appeal, no recourse. The attorney-general can then also announce that anyone who buys a car and then has a couple of beers is wasting his money owning a car as the province has the power to seize it and crush it.

Everybody had better sit back and take a minute to think this one through. You can’t just blame the politicians, although they are often willing to jump on any bandwagon if they think it can bring them political advantage. Street racing is no different. Don’t get sucked in that politicians really care deeply about this — they don’t or vehicles wouldn’t have the capability to exceed 100 kilometres an hour. They could legislate slow speeds by having vehicles governed by their onboard computers. Oh, but look at all the revenue that would be lost from issuing speeding tickets — so that’s not going to happen.

What about the huge taxpaying businesses that sell racing parts? Will they close their doors? This includes companies such as Canadian Tire and other large companies. Most of the racing parts they sell are not racing parts at all, just dress-up bits that alter a car’s looks, personalizing it — like putting new floors in your kitchen and painting the walls a different colour.

Very few modified cars carry much racing equipment capable of altering their performance abilities. Face it, a small car with a 140-horsepower stock engine that’s been altered with “racing gear” to give it 150 hp is not much of a danger. It’s not pretty wheels and stripes that render a car dangerous, it is the driver.

If the government starts taking cars and wrecking them because they look like racing cars, people will race cars that don’t look like racing cars. Hell, I recently had a young man in what must have been his father’s Volvo station wagon try to badger me into racing him. I was driving a 425-hp Lotus Esprit. He was just young and dumb, but should he have his dad’s car crushed instead of being given a ticket? What if a police officer had seen him being stupid and figured I was racing, too, which I was not? That Lotus would be an expensive scrap.

Car crushing is a stupid solution to a problem that has existed since the first human reached adolescence. I do not think that a police or transport ministry officer should have the power to arbitrarily decide a car should be crushed. What if he is pissed off because some kid gave him the finger on a bad day? Scary thought. Many of my very expensive cars could be deemed to be racing equipped even though they are totally original. I guess the premier and his boys can just crush them, too.

Actually, why doesn’ t the province just shortcircuit the process and take a swing by all the dealerships, grab all the turbos, mag wheels, special graphics, racing seats, etc., and crush them before anyone has the chance to buy them? Voila, problem solved.