Don’t give these kids the keys
By Ken MacQueen - Friday, September 9, 2011 - 13 Comments
A group of novice drivers are caught street-racing in a squadron of supercars—and get a $196 ticket
Tom Zytaruk/Surrey Now
The 911 calls started rolling about 3:30 p.m. last Wednesday, just as the B.C. Lower Mainland’s notorious rush hour was starting to build: so many high-powered luxury cars were weaving recklessly through traffic as they raced south on Highway 99 that it looked like a Need for Speed video game come to life. A squadron of Ferraris, Lamborghinis and the like flew past anxious drivers as they streaked out of the narrow George Massey tunnel under the Fraser River toward Surrey and the seaside community of White Rock.
Lower Mainland RCMP scrambled to get a helicopter over the scene for an accurate measure of the speeds, which may have exceeded 200 km/h, but there wasn’t time, said RCMP Supt. Norm Gaumont, the officer in charge of traffic for the region. RCMP cruisers corralled some of the racers in Surrey, while the rest were pulled over in White Rock. In all, they impounded 13 vehicles worth $2 million by police estimates.
“I’ve got a Ferrari 599, I have three Lamborghini Gallardos, I have an Audi R8, I have three Nissan GTRs, I have two Maserati Turismos, I have two Mercedes SLS and I have an Aston Martin,” said Gaumont, reading through the list of cars impounded for seven days under provincial anti-street-racing laws. None of the 12 males and one female, all from Vancouver or Richmond, was older than 21. Six were novice drivers, required under B.C.’s licence system to display an “N” sign on the rear of their vehicle. “My son drives a ’94 Mazda,” said Gaumont, “and he thinks he’s pretty hard done by after this.”
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Street racer or good samaritan?
By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 1:00 PM - 3 Comments
A motorist told to ‘get the plate’ of a dangerous driver sped into trouble
To quote the justice of the peace, “this is a highly unusual case.” It all began in the early morning hours of Feb. 24, 2008, when an Ontario man, Taki Christopoulos, was driving home from his cousin’s house in downtown Toronto. As his blue BMW headed north of the city, another driver pulled up beside the car, extended his middle finger—and waved a gun. Here’s the really unusual part: when Christopoulos phoned 911 to report the incident, the operator told him to “get the plate” of the other vehicle. So he hit the gas pedal.Unfortunately for him, a traffic cop noticed both cars barrelling down the freeway… and pulled over the wrong bad guy. Christopoulos was charged with “chasing”—a violation of Ontario’s new stunt driving law—and lost his licence, and his bimmer, for seven days. Continue…
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Fast and furious
By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, April 30, 2009 at 11:20 AM - 9 Comments
Do street racing laws actually violate the Charter of Rights?
If nothing else, Ontario’s new “street racing” law has made for some amusing police blotter. There was that heavy-footed firefighter who had his emergency vehicle impounded for seven days (he was off-duty when a North Bay cop clocked him at 70 km/h over the limit). Another driver nabbed in the same part of the province also lost his wheels for a week—as did the speeding tow truck driver who came to impound the car. And then, of course, there was Antonio Talarico, the 26-year-old who made headlines across the country last month when his Infiniti G35 was spotted tearing down a Toronto highway at a whopping 250 km/h. His first words after being pulled over? “I’m sorry.”The Ontario Provincial Police certainly isn’t apologizing. Or laughing. The force says the tough new street racing penalties—including possible prison time for anyone caught driving more than 50 km/h over the limit—are doing exactly what they were designed to do: save lives. In 2008, the law’s first full year on the books, fatalities on OPP-patrolled roads plummeted by almost one-third (from 451 to 322), and in the first three months of 2009 there were 17 speed-related deaths, a 29 per cent drop from the same period last year.
