Australia is in the middle of an anti-hooning jihad, confiscating the cars of street racers, donut makers and anyone else who dares hoon on the country's highways and byways. Last night, Perth police confiscated three cars in an hour, in the aptly named (at least for the coppers) Success. 720 ABC Perth reports that a 17-year-old girl and two men were booked for "creating undue and excessive noise. Although the vehicles were only impounded for 48 hours (plus steep fines), the country's law enforcement officials are happy to crush tasty tunermobiles owned by more accelerative hoonatics. The crackdown stems from the lethal consequence of illegal street racing, yet there isn't any scientific data on the overall perils of hooning. According to ABC Queensland, a researcher from Queensland University of Technology aims to redress that deficiency with a study for the school's Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety. Nerida Leal wants to keep it real: "Ill ask whether they think it's been effective, [and] whether they've come into contact with a police officer as part of an anti-hooning operation."
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Goddamned kids.
Get off my lawn!!
Just as with the other government-sponsored perils of modern life, hooning has become the new troll under the bridge. No one had died hooning in Oakland until the police decided it was Public Menace Number One (this in a city with one of the highest murder rates in the U.S.!); a high speed chase several years ago thus brought the requisite death statistics to rationalize additional police pressure on these evil hoons.
How about some police investigations as to why our roadways are falling apart? Surely the property damage and injuries in the Minneapolis bridge collapse suggest that this is worthy of some attention…
Bridge? You mean we would have to spend tax money on really useful things like repairing infrastructure?
Nah, better have police chases to keep the people busy flipping through Court TV and arresting hooners to make suburbanites feel better.
Why should we address real issues? They’re boring.
Note: While I’m using a sarcastic tone, I don’t mean in any way to offend the people hurt or killed in the bridge collapse, or their families, which is an unacceptable disaster.
I didn’t even know what “hooning” was until I started reading TTAC!
BTW, on CNN last night, Paula Zahn was trying to cut off Bill Nye the Science Guy because of “lack of time,” but he was able to get his point across that public structures like the bridge that collapsed need tax money for adequate repair and maintenance. This constant mantra for “no new taxes,” mostly from the GOP, can be deadly.
Oh, boy, thread hijack.
I believe in no new taxes.
I believe in rebuilding the infrastructure.
Therefore I believe in taking $ from social programs and funding infrastructure repair – bridges, roads, dams, etc.
See? Easy.
Hey ChuckR, there are no social programs, just billions going you know where, and a lot going to abstinence only education and oh, Halliburton?
Don’t shake your faux Republican stick around here.
I think they should designate special out of the way places as “hoon centers.” You know, like abandoned retail space parking lots etc. Or maybe there should be a “Hoons Anonymous” where some rich hoon buys his own race track and then turns it into a special hoon club with reasonable membership dues. You get hoons off the street and give them a proper venue for said hoonage. (kinda like how all these cities built skate parks in the u.s. to keep those “destructive” skateboarders off private and public property.
hey spudz
those hoonage centers would of course have to be Federally subsidized. I’m sure its in the Constitution somewhere. Possible they might drive from state to state, so you’d use that old easy virtue Commerce Clause. But where to put it? You need to educate the little stinkers so maybe Dept of Ed ($56billion). But wait, both HUD ($28 billion) and HHS ($642 billion) might have a claim, as Transportation ($60 billion) logically would. Although such measures would provide a Defense ($420 billion) against their probable bad judgment, that would be a real stretch. (All numbers FY06 approx). Silly as all this is, are you aware that when TV switches to HD signals only, people without HD-ready idiot boxes will be eligible for digital to analog converter box coupons? Cost – up to $510 million or enough to replace the I35W bridge and three others of similar size/cost, to the benefit of all who risk driving in the US.
The State of Minnesota recently was running a $2 billion budget *surplus*, which they’re now throwing into 3 new sports stadiums. The revenue is there already without raising taxes or cutting social programs, it just has to be put to the right uses. (Heck, the bridge that collapsed was being renovated at the time, just not structurally, so the talking point that there was no money is *really* silly).
Back to topic: I have nothing to add, I just like saying “anti-hoonage operation”.