Street Racing: The carnage continues
 

Hey, be careful out there.

BL


Tuesday, September 16, 2008

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A newborn baby girl died after she was thrown from her car seat during an apparent street race that ended in a crash in Phoenix, police said.

The 6-week-old infant died Monday night, according to MyFOXPhoenix.com.

The 24-year-old unidentified driver of the Ford Mustang that was carrying the child was listed in critical condition.

Police believe the man behind the wheel was racing another vehicle with the baby girl strapped in her car seat in the back when he lost control and crashed into a utility pole in the western part of the city.

The alleged joy ride ended in tragedy: The child was ejected from the Mustang and died from her injuries.

There was no immediate word as to whether charges would be

After the driver recovers, they should take him/her out back and shoot 'em.

That occured to me also.

Anything I read like this I only take half seriously. The media has something out for street racing and will sensationalize it whenever they get a chance. The last time I read something in the paper about street racing it said that three people were injured in a street racing accident. In fact it was some drunk that plowed into a crowd of people watching street racing, it wasn't in fact a directly street racing related accident. But it was more interesting to report it as such rather than as a drunk driving accident.

No doubt it's a tragedy as to what happened. The fact is that the baby is dead. Whether or not street racing was actually involved though I would not take as fact.

I witnessed a three year old girl going into a life-flight helicopter, after being removed from the carnage of an accident. An officer had to be pulled off from kicking her dead father, laying on the ground.
Cause of accident? High speed police chase on a dead end country road.
Isn't a high speed chase street racing that's legal for one of the participants?

Unfortunately there are, and always will be, a whole buttload of stupid people in this world. Years ago my mom witnessed a woman she knew get killed when she got in the way of two cars racing. My mom watched her take her last breath.

Stories like this makes me thank god that he was looking over my shoulder when I was younger. Although nothing as dumb as racing with my new born baby, I can't say I've always been able to resist the urge to do stupid stuff for the momentary thrill. I think that's true for all of us at one time or another.

The guilt / pain of killing your own child would be punishment enough for him. That's a life sentence of personal guilt and trauma on top of whatever jail time criminal charges felony reckless driving carries. No need to take him out back with a shotgun.

That said, if he does it a second time .. I'll help load your gun.

Part of maturing is understanding that what you did or are doing is really very stupid. Once you have a child, it is time to get smart pretty quickly.

Obviously, this doesn't happen as much as we would like.

yeah, seriously. I don't have chlidren, but I can't for the life of me imagine street racing (if I was so inclined) with my dog even in the car, let alone a baby. I used to even drive slower when my ex's 5-year-old son was in the back.

:eek: Hey LB it's illegal to put children in the trunk of a vehicle no matter how slow you drive :D

In my youth I lost two friends to canyon racing. One was high speed motorcycle crosses center line meets pickup truck head on. The other, less than a year later was 90mph hot rod Chevy over a cliff. I miss those guys. Kinda took the party out of street racing for me.

Last week I was passed on the freeway by two cars going 100+ and diving in and out of traffic. One narrowly missed clipping a mommobile SUV. Where is that hood mounted 20mm cannon when you really need it.

Sorry, but you can't mount a 20 mm cannon on a 2.5 ltr base Box. The recoil would overcome the forward thrust of your woefully underpowered engine. You need at least a 3.2 to mount a hood cannon.

We see this kind of nonsense here in SOCAL everyday. These knotheads play with Play Station and then out and emulate.

Where is my aluminum baseball bat again?

street racing that leads to a fatality should be charged in court as a murder.

some jurisdictions are doing it already.

In CA, and many other states, it is common for repeat DUI offenders who crash/kill someone while once again driving DUI to be charged with 2nd degree murder. Why not do this for repeat racers. In some ways it's even more aggravating. Some of the DUI drivers are so "out of it" that they don't fully comprehend the danger they are creating. Most of the street racers know exactly what they are doing... such a waste to lose a life over something as trivial as trying to show off how fast your car is...

Street racing in stupid. I've never done it but I've been to a couple of 'street races'. Most of the people there are the same ones who put those huge rear spoilers on their cars,bahahahaha. If you going to do it go out to a closed business district super late at night,but even then, :barf: .

It just not worth the risk,you can't control the variables/environment and going to a track or autocross only cost $20.

If by "they" you mean his wife, I'm sure she will. This is horrible.

The officer was kicking the dead father laying on the ground? why?

The officer was upset at what he had done to the little girl.
I was building a house on the road and found out the same cop punched the cop chasing them. The father had kidnapped his daughter from ex-wife. Another custody battle gone fatal. The girl didn't survive.

Sounds kinda like the infant was not properly restrained.

But yeah, street racing is STUPID.

Ahh, that was in an SUV! :p

I guess my dad used to street race when he was young, but at least they did it on windy roads out in the middle of nowhere. He flipped an MG over and flew out and busted himself up pretty badly. He was lucky though. If he'd stayed in the car he would have probably broken his neck. Now at age 67 he drives slow as a snail.

That's not punishment, that's just revenge. Rather have him life with his guilt for the rest of his life while he stares through the steel bars of his prison cell.

Never have truer words been typed.

Annual cost to incarcerate a prisoner is in the range $20,000 - $25,000 (citation). Cost of a single 9mm round is $0.25 including tax (citation). Who are we punishing more, the criminal or the tax payer?

Timothy, I clearly see your point (the math is simple) but the human rights issues are far more complex. Do we take someone out and shoot them for being stupid? Where should we draw the line? When they seriously hurt a person or if they kill a person?

I ain't no bleeding heart liberal by any means, but taking them out and shooting them is a slippery slope in and of itself.

Now I've always believed that our prison system should be run a tad more like the Mexico prisons... nasty places you never want to go back to and have nightmares about every day you are there and every day after you leave. Your family must bring you food too or you don't eat much.

And I like the warden (wherever he's located) that put the men in pink jumpsuits and make the work in the fields growing vegetables for 12 hours a day to pay for their incarceration. They live in non air-conditioned tents with no electricity in the fields as well.

Why they don't make prison far worse than it is today I do not understand. I know it's no picnic, but hey, changes could be made to make it far less tolerable and pay for itself.

Randall, don't get me wrong, the bulk of the comment was in jest and intended to raise a economic concern about our current system of locking up someone "for the rest of his life," as ChrisZang put it. I don't advocate capital punishment as routine, regardless of the incarceration costs. But with life in prison costing over 800k (assuming 40 years), I get frustrated by the ever increasing prison population as another group to be supported by Mr and Mrs tax payer. Clearly shooting someone is not the answer but neither is an overcrowded jail system. I like your idea of a jumpsuit and shovel as standard issue. Driving through west Texas I've seen guards on horseback watching over prison work crews. If the courts took that approach with early offenders there may not be so many who return for a second and third stay.

I should have wrote initially that I had guessed your response was in jest (well, 80% of it anyway!)

We need serious prison reform in this country. However, constitutional amendments must be drafted and pass congress to really clamp down on the problem or the ACLU will continue to whine on behalf of poorly treated prisoners... who should lose a vast majority of their rights while in prison.

I have your prison reform plan, you'll LOVE this!

Anyone can make a mistake. As long as it is not murder or extreme aggravated violence, I would have one sentence - five years.
During those five years there are no possibilities of early release, for any reason. Also, during those five years, you WILL learn a trade, and you will be paid minimum wage for those 80 hour weeks you WILL work at mastering the trade you have chosen. You will, however, have no access to those funds you are earning, other than whatever the alotment is currently to buy cigarettes, coffee, etc. So, when your five years is up, you will have a nest-egg (that has drawn market interest) to set yourself up in a place to live, purchase some sort of transportation and have living expenses while finding a job. You will have NO EXCUSE for returning to a life of crime.
IF the crime is murder, extreme violence or a return offender, you have forfeited your right to exist in our society. Bye-bye.
I see no circumstance in which we (society) owe more to a violent criminal, or one who refuses to accept the rules for remaining in our soiciety, than we (society) owe to ourselves.

I m guessing you guys have never been to the big house. You simply can't run a prison yard that way.

Sure, there's prison in Thailand that gives the inmate once a month showers via fire hoses, and SWAT teams is required to enter the jail because the inmates WILL attack. But that's Thailand. This is America. There's plenty of bleeding heart liberals that will swamp the district attorney, senator, governor with human right violation lawsuits.

Inside the prison will be worse. People can only be pushed so far before they resort to extreme levels of violence. Especially those already violently inclined. There WILL be daily riots. You'll have to double the prison guards (which get paid about $120k a year after overtimes since they work 12 hour shifts ). Those guys will have to have extra protection gear for those guards at ALL time because they will be attacked by prisoners much more frequently. Death count will sky rocket for both inmates and guards. That means funeral cost and compensation for the guard's family as well as funeral for the inmate .. unless you want to save money just toss their bodies in a ditch and be done with it.

Whatever you save on the 50c to $1 that it actually cost for an inmate's meal will quickly be paid back in other ways.

And btw, 'early release' program is what actually keeps SOME of the inmates in line and is actually the biggest trap to re incarcerate the inmate for a MUCH longer period of time for violations. Try keeping order in a prison yard where good behavior counts for diddly.

This is just a lil rant. I know most of you guys are mostly kidding.

BTW, you guys should watch this movie called `Felon` ( imdb ) . Its a great movie about prison life. It also makes a great case to why the 5 year rule proposed by Quickurt would never work.

Screw a 9mm. Just get a .22 for about a penny or two and make sure it's well placed.

:)

May be, but my bye-byes will work - EVERY TIME.

We are a bit off topic here, no? :D

Again, lets be careful out there. Often, it isn't what you do, its what you don't see coming. Use those rear view and side mirrors often.

:cheers:

I was thinking the same about the topic, about the time I finished the last post and went back to General Discussion - Street racing? Thats what we were talking about?
And yes to the mirrors in traffic. I'm blessed with years of racing one of the slower classes in the group. We had FCs and Atlantics on the track at the same time and especially the Atlantics were WAYYYY faster. I always kept my mirrors front and center in my awareness.
Here in J-Ville the brothers have become really big on crotch rockets and they race on the expressways constantly. It is not uncommon to have four to ten of them scream up from behind, doing 40 to 60 mph more than traffic and cut between cars, between and across lanes, as just a flash. It scares the hell our of me and my wife will litterally scream. We have alot of organ donors, here in Jax.
I still keep my mirrors well adjusted and well within heightened awareness levels. I like to think that has maybe saved a few of these idiot lives for a couple more days.

agreed .. i have slight a.d.d so its hard to stay on topic sometimes .. lol .. apologies.

The crotch rockets are a real issue in SOCAL. I have a bike and I lane split from time to time when traffic stops. Otherwise, I ride like someone is trying to kill me with dumbness, which is a correct assumption.

These guys are simply nuts. I am sure none of them has actually gone down on their rockets. Once you go down, it kinda of cures you in either one of two ways.

1-Dead or diabled.

2-Wiser and very very sore.

I did number 2 once which avoided number 1 later on.

Learning is a very very good thing.

PS-I always give my wife a heads up on the bikes coming through. I can be very scary when you don't know they are coming.

I do when I have the chance. Usually I barely have time to give the morons a few more inches of clearance. I really don't want to have to witness, or especially have my wife witness, one of their disasters.

Hey Rich,
Have you thought about a sticky thread, or perhaps a section, dedicated to the competition drivers on the forum passing along info to those who haven't had the benefit of this experience applied to daily driving?
I thought about it when I made my mirror comments above and also the awareness comments. For those who have only been taught the BS wandering eyes strategy of trying to see everything, they will be amazed at the proper way to drive. Same with simple stuff like proper adjustment of all three rear view mirrors and how to watch the big picture of your periferial (sp?) vision, while prioritizing parts of that view. I actually really enjoyed applying what I learned by reading books by Jackie Stewart and Niki Lauda to daily driving, as off track practice. The un-thought-of side benefiit was a drastic improvement in daily driving safety. I have since passed those lessons on to my wife and two daughters. I'm also sure the guys who have raced and track dayed their Boxsters have some great info I didn't learn driving purpose-built race cars.

If you start a thread, I will stick it.

Easier than trying to set up a different forum.