Opinion: Just bloody dangerous

By John Grant

There is no doubt that young males in fast cars are a bad combination.

Put them behind a the wheel with a few drinks on a suburban street and it’s a recipe for mayhem. That’s exactly what could have happened last night when a White Subaru Legacy raced around the streets of Bayswater.

The car lost control on a right hand bend in the road and slid across the road and mounted the kerb. One neighbour just down the road from this incident had a similar problem several months ago when a car with young people lost control while traveling at speed and went through his fence and stopped just short of the house.

Another neighbor told The Flea that they had a car written off when it was demolished while parked one evening.

In last nights incident the road normally has a reasonable number of parked cars and a photograph today of the skid marks shows the car went from the left side of the road across to the right side. Today a vehicle was parked where the car had slid and if it had been parked in the same place last night then it could have been a serious injury accident.

Many of these boy-racer cars are not only uninsured but also unregistered and the police seem little motivated to take action even when full details are provided, even when theyare provided registration details as they were on this occasion.

The Sunday night Norwood Road incident was reported to police who indicated that it would be referred to ‘control’ for a decision on whether further action would be taken. The person in the Police who took the call was able to indicate that the offending car was from the neighborhood.

At the time of writing this there had been no further feedback from police on what action if any had been taken. The matter has now also been referred to Wayne Mapp as the local MP who is also a resident of the area and who resides not far from where the incident occurred.

Similar problems with boy racers are getting action in other places. A story on Stuff about a police crackdown having results in the Wairarapa indicates what could be done with a focussed campaign.

This seems a classic case of an opportunity for some decisive action to be taken to try and kerb these issues which are a constant problem not only in and around Bayswater but throughout the North Shore and New Zealand.

We will keep following this story until it has a more satisfactory conclusion.