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Street racing

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For sanctioned racing taking place on temporary circuits erected on city streets, see road racing.

Street racing is a form of auto racing that takes place on public roads, either during normal traffic or during empty hours of traffic, often within the industrial areas of cities. It is illegal, as such driving is prohibited by many traffic regulations. Law enforcement officers attempt to stop these races, but because of the frequency of them, most of the time, the racers either are not caught or they get away. Speeds in an illegal street race can reach over 180 miles per hour and crashes can and do occur.

Most common form of street racing in the US is a drag race of modified stock cars happening late at night on straight public roads with very low traffic that are often illegally closed by the race organizers. (Professional drag racers who race on sanctioned drag strips often object to the use of the term drag race to describe an event of this type.) The motivations behind illegal street races are many: lack of a nearby drag strip (although street racing occurs even where drag strips are within a reasonable driving distance), the temptation of illegality of such a race (which could be interrupted by a police squad any time), or just the similarity to a day to day situations at a traffic light. Streetracing is also a growing business with streetracers being steady consumers of aftermarket tuning parts, as well as in the automotive industry. Street races can also occur on expressways and highways, infamously in Japan, where they are known as kousoko battle and frequently occur on the Shuto Expressway in Tokyo. The most notorious group to be associated with it was the MidNight Club who gave street racing a worldwide attention with its 300 km/h antics and was known for its high standards and organisation until they were disbanded in 1999 following a fatal accident involving a competing group of motorcyclists. Nowadays, with heavier punishments, patrolling police cars and speed cameras, expressway racing in Japan is not as common as it was during the 80's and 90's but still occurs on a regular basis.

In some places there have been legal street races known as blackraces. This is not the same as road racing. It is strictly an amateur sport with road legal vehicles. Usually the races are done on a closed road and run on time and not against another vehicle, the most famous being the annual Silver State Classic.

In rural Japan, racers slide around the corners of remote winding mountain passes, as portrayed in the manga/anime Initial D. This "sport" is called Touge, and is the origin of drifting.[1].

Street races occur all over the United States; indeed, the argument could be made that it is almost inevitable that street races will occur anywhere there are public roads. Unsanctioned racing with unknown participants, on an unknown course, for an unknown duration is the most common type of road racing sport. A contest may last seconds or many hours. The informal events have the common characteristic that, the car in front at the finish wins, the leading car chooses the course, and the finish is when the stalking car quits.

This being said, some states have more active racing scenes than others. There is a strong racing culture in Southern California, which centers quite heavily around imports, as well as such American sports cars as the Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro. There are also very active street racing cultures in New York, Florida, New Jersey, Nevada and Texas. In some cases, the popularity has led to tough anti-street racing laws which give more strict punishments than normal traffic citations and also often dedicated anti-racing task forces. In 2005 a law in Tennessee that was passed prohibited cars to have Nitrous Oxide hooked up or even present inside a car, among other performance enhancers. Penalties include impoundment, taking of drivers license for a period of time or permanently, This came about after a fatal crash in Johnson City, Tennessee.

See also

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