From: Mark W. Duwe
Columbus
Back in the day, I enjoyed drag racing. I used to go to Brown County Dragway just outside of Bean Blossom all the time. I raced my old 1966 Mustang there and then a few years later I had a 1984 Corvette. That car ran a 9.70 in the eighth-mile. Pretty good for just driving it off the street. I even got to race with the big boys once when I drove to Cleves, Ohio, to their quarter-mile drag strip. “Big Daddy” Don Garlits and “TV” Tommy Ivo, not to mention Shirley “Cha Cha” Muldowney were all there. I got a trophy that night.
Since getting older and living in various parts of Columbus, I have found that there are a lot of people who think these city streets are their own personal drag strips. I’m sure every town has them — the section of a street where you can come off a stop sign and not have to stop again for several blocks. I hear them go by my house all the time.
This is very dangerous for many reasons, but mostly because children might be playing nearby and it wouldn’t take much to push a car going 60 mph in a 30 mph zone onto a sidewalk or even into someone’s yard. So, what can you do about it? If it is really a problem, adding a stop sign every couple of blocks would help. Also, it would be great if we could get input from the public where they say there are “dragstrips” in their neighborhoods.
I know that at certain times of the day there are at least a dozen cars speeding on my street. People need to know that if they are pulled over for doing 45 in a 30 mph zone, that qualifies for reckless driving, which means you could lose your license.
Sure, I get it. It’s fun to go fast. You love the sound of the exhaust and getting pinned back in your seat, but we have to live in an organized society. If you really want to drag race, there are places built just for that purpose. In the meantime, I think we need a major crackdown on drag racing on our city streets.
