If you see yourself as a boy racer and want to be antisocial with it, there’s a law coming your way, and it’s not on your side. Photo / 123rf
“Were you ever a hoon in your younger days?” I innocently asked some bowling club colleagues earlier this week.
“What do you mean?” came the indignant reply.
“Well, did you try to soup up your early cars, holes in the exhaust, twin carbs, modify the manifold, and then try to drag others at the lights? That type of thing,” I replied.
“Nah, too busy trying to get qualified and establish a career.”
We ended the conversation, agreeing about how we had spent our earlier days.
I shared a flat in Palmerston North, with four other Ag students in the late 60s.
There is a classic photo of 55 Bourke St with six cars outside.
One was surplus as the owner had spent Easter purchasing and repainting a 1930 Dodge, which left his Morrie Thou as surplus to be sold.
The cars ranged in age from a 1928 Model A to a 1965 Vauxhall Victa.
One thrill was piling into the Model A and chugging up the Massey hill looking down on those students who had walked, or thumbed their way out.
Coincidentally, that same year, there is another classic photograph from the Manawatu Evening Standard of our flatmates, after winning the Hokowhitu Lagoon Bath Race. We’d spent Easter constructing the vessel.
The centrepiece was the cast iron bath, and on either side, were a series of 10gallon drums wired together to the bath, and stabilised with a wooden frame.
Built for speed with the bath just above the water line, we survived flour bombs, water bombs, buckets of duck poo, and numerous attempts to sink us. The highlight of my Massey University extracurricular achievements!
There were a few hot cars and drivers at Massey in those days. The most prominent was Reg Cook, who became a bit of a magnet for similarly interested students.
Reg is now a 78-year-old, self-described geriatric, currently in Bolivia chasing the world land speed record in a piston engine, wheel driven car. He’s looking for 800km/h on the Bolivian salt flats to beat the current record of 758km/h.
Now to the current Boy Racer (Anti-Social Road User Amendment) Bill which is currently before Parliament’s Justice Select Committee. The Bill is intended to deter anti-social driving that negatively affects road and community safety.
The Bill, as currently drafted, requires that the court must order a vehicle to be forfeited or destroyed upon the first conviction for, street racing, sustained loss of traction, for frightening or intimidating convoys, and failing to stop while exceeding the speed limit or driving dangerously.
The Bill also proposes a $1000 fine infringement for drivers who failed to leave an area when directed by police, and has a sixfold increase to $300 in the penalty for making excessive noise from a car, euphemistically called ‘sirening’.
Vehicle owners who fail to identify offending drivers, will also face the confiscation and destruction of their cars. There is no three strikes concession.
Various submissions seem to generally be supportive of the objective to improve road and community safety.
They do raise concerns about, being incompatible with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, that there could be perverse outcomes, incentivise fleeing, that some proposed penalties were disproportionate to the offence, as well as eroding judicial discretion,
The Law Association of NZ suggested; “That, if we keep adding new offences every time a problem arises, then we are really risking over criminalising and clogging the courts”.
The Government’s law and order agenda has included new offences relating to, coward punches, protests outside residential homes, wearing gang patches, stalking, and assaulting first responders, as well as legislatively imposing sentencing guidelines on the judiciary. There really has been a lot on.
I can’t help thinking that if all of this is being superimposed on an overloaded and creaking court system, then there’s got to be a better way to deal with the testosterone-loaded youngsters, who want to show off their cars and need only an enlarged concrete pad to do donuts.
Is this legislation really a sledgehammer to crack a walnut, and will it ultimately become bound up in litigation, appeals, delayed outcomes and wasted court time?
Boy racers, it seems, do grow up to be car enthusiasts, and form clubs around vintage cars, custom cars, drag races, car rallies, go-karters, petrol heads and enjoying the Formula One spectacle.
So, what makes a boy racer and what are we trying to control?
Car modifications include exhaust, alloy wheels, uprated brakes, lowering, tinted windows, body kits, wide and cheap tyres, spoilers, bigger air filters, under-car neons and so on. One wag added; “A For Sale sign on the rear window, and an idiot behind the wheel”.
Really though, these kids spend a fortune to make ordinary cars look cool and be admired by others. Being cool is also about burying the boot and doing donuts until the tyres burst. These kids have an interest and a hobby.
The problem lies when they do it in public places, annoying and endangering the public, and defying the police. But these kids grow up.
Just as we provide grounds and stadiums for other sports and interests to participate and mature in, perhaps our public bodies should be trying to establish venues to accommodate all noisy sports, for participation in a supervised and controlled manner.
Meantime though, if you see yourself as a boy racer and want to be antisocial with it, there’s a law coming your way, and it’s not on your side.