ILLEGAL STREET RACING

Published Sept. 27, 2007
By Hank Tate

Via e-mail -- With your cover story on "Illegal Street Racing" in the July/August 2007 issue, you've hit on a topic that "drives" me crazy (no pun intended). It seems more and more people are turning their vehicles into "weapons of mass destruction" by participating in this illegal activity.

For a lot of people, it's not the pre-arranged races that are getting them. It's the ones where kids race each other home from a Friday night high school football game on the spur of the moment. They do it just because they happened to see their friend in the vehicle next to them and want to have a little fun. Or it's the ones where one driver cuts off another on the highway, and a road rage race ensues.

These illegal races are dangerous on our crowded roads, and innocent people, like Master Sgt. Prince Porter and Senior Airman Christopher Pedroley, are paying the price. Thank you for covering a much needed topic so well, and thanks to Sergeant Porter for sharing his story. Hopefully, his experience will get some people thinking.