loomdog32

hey guys, im sorry to tell u guys bout this, but early easter morning at about 2am, i was involved in an accident that killed 2 maybe more ppl at street races in fresno, cali at lincoln and cornilla.. WE WERE NOT RACING.. (POS mazda w/ 5 ppl goin the opposite direction ppl were racing).. there were about 200+ cars and 500+ ppl.. they were lined up parked along both sides of the road for about a 1/4 mi.. we were doin about 40 mph (i looked at the speedo so i do know that for a fact).. came to were the races were starting, went thru a cloud of smoke (probably from a burnout).. about 10ft after the smoke, there was a car stopped in the northbound lane and 5-6 ppl standing in the southbound lane.. we hit the ppl standing in the southbound lane and a parked car.. all i remember is hitting the first person, watching him fly over the car.. the hitting the second person.. me hitting the winshield (i was wearing a seatbelt, but it failed).. looking at the otehr person on the other side of the winshield (thats probably the only thing that stopped me from goin thru the winshield)..

there was 1 person dead the the scene (14 yo male).. a 18 yo male died at the hospital upon arrival.. ive head the the 19 yo brother of the 14 yo died monday in the hospital..

im not too bady hurt.. my left arm or scratched up really bad.. my lip is a big scar, i got a gash on my head, and i brused my ribs..

i hope everyone reads this and STOPS RACING ON THE STREET!!! its not only illegal but its very dangerous

AlkyIROC

Interesting. Every online news story I can find says a drunk driver drove into the spectators. You claim you weren't racing but it appears you were drunk driving. There's no excuse for either.

The media keep calling it a drag race please contact them and inform them of their improper use of terms since a street race is not a drag race. It gives real drag racers a bad name.

5.0mustang

I feel sorry for everyone involved, especially the families who lost someone. You should post this on the street racing board, to show some of the people the consequences involved in illegally racing.

loomdog32

the driver was barly drunk (.09).. i didnt know he was drunk.. i wouldnt have let him drive if i had known he was.. i had only seen him drink 2 beers 3 hrs before it happened.. i know he didnt drink anything after that.. the story was in the monday fresno bee and my interview was in the tuesday fresno bee.. both front page.. la times interviewed me, but i donno when its gonna be printed..

1982chevycamaroz28

how bout this DONT STREET RACE AT ALL!!! if u want to race go to a ****in track. *** is it that hard to spend what 20-25 bucks to make runs down the track and not kill anyone or get a ticket or anything.

FAST RS

I go to the street races dont partaca pate but i was in Sylmar, CA and there were 2 hondas raceg well one wen thead on into a SUV not a pretty site. On a side not i would love to go to a track but they are a min of a 3 hour drive for me to get to one.

NJ SPEEDER

gee a 3hour ride to the track or forever in a casket. i can see your delema.
i stopped street racing a long time ago when i saw an accident in philly that killed someone. it is really a chilling site. evryone is cheering, car wrecks, and everyoen bails cause they know the cops are coming.
it is not worth it, plain and simple. street races don't prove anything. when you get done the race people always have excuses abotu who left first or where the race was supposed to end. make it all simple, go to thetrack. there is only one chance togo, you know instantly if you went early, and there is a piece of paper that both drivers get that says who won.
no side streets, no bad pavement spots, and no cops to worry about.

later
tim

1982chevycamaroz28

thanx for addin more tim. i just think that people are lazy that they cant drive to a track and make there passes with out killin someone or anything. even if u have to drive 3 hours. its better then being dead or hell if the cops get more stricker on the laws its better then if they give u jail time.

FAST RS

Like i said i dont particapate in them yes i used to but then i realized its not worth the tickets haveing my car impunded or any thing like that i got tired of them after the cops would literly chase you down in the fields. havent gone i havent takin my car in over a year if im with my frineds ill go but thats about it and that rarely happens. I know how allot of the people drive and they dont take into consideration any factors they jus tthink ill push the gas. When you get careles something is awlays bound to happen

JPrevost

Brings a tear to my eye just thinking about the families of the kids killed. It also bugs me that now drag racing is probably going to get an even worse reputation.
I'm only 20 but there is no way I would race in a street, just thinking about it doesn't make any sence. Why don't they just enjoy their rides and cruise em. If somebody wants to talk smack give them the time and TRACK to race! If they try and convince you it isn't worth it then bring up this tragic story.
If you do any street racing, do it with nobody else around! A nice quiet road with no houses and no woods is usually the best.
How can these kids afford tickets and getting arrested?

TomP

Blame it on the Fast & The Furious. Stupid movie. No wonder us guys in f-bodies take crap from cops...

JmeierZ28

Exactly.. F&F made ricers think it's cool to goto the illegial drags.

I can remember the weekend that movie came out.. That same weekend and the one after, the illegials in San Diego were FLODDED with wannabe racers.

jobryan26

Very sad to hear about the lives lost. Even more so to the families that thought their kids were safe at home in the bed only to be waken by a knock at the door. The horror they must be feeling is even more than I could imagine.

NTChrist

Thank you for adding that last part, Jon. I was about to jump all over you for painting all street racers as killers. I've never seen a fatal accident (or even a serious accident) when street racing.
Just be smart about it, like JPrevost says. No passengers, no bystanders, no drugs/booze/distractions, and things will go smoothly.

Keep in mind, in this case, the person at fault for hitting the pedestrians WAS NOT RACING.
Had it been a church barbeque (not too sure why it would be held on the street, but I'm theorizing), the news stories would have been different. It would have been about a drunk driver, and the gathering that he drove through would have barely been mentioned.

Point fingers all you guys want, but in this case, the racers weren't the ones doing the killing.
This thread may make for good related reading.

85transamtpi

Man,
It sucks to hear about this. It is obvious where the fault lies in this accident...the drunk driver. Anyone getting behind the wheel of a car after drinking, and then heads out to an street race is just plain DUMB!

I have to admit, that yes I do race on the street. But when it happens its between me and the other car...not me the other car, and hundreds of spectators. I set up the race, go to a DESERTED spot, and run.

I hate to say it, but judging by the street scene in chicago this wont be the last accident like this.

-Doug

NJ SPEEDER

any body who watched the news from philly knows itr wasn't even the last accident tht day
honda + pole = 2 dead

later
tim

grimesjm1

In my opinion, you guys seem to be blaming all kinds of factors into this, the number of people there, the fact that street racing was going on, and the fact that the driver was drunk. Pretty much the drunk driver is the contributor to the accident.

Had these kids been a family crossing the street going to church, no one would of commented on the dangers of going to church. Had this happened in dense fog instead of smoke, no one would of commented on how the fog was to blame. The fact still remains that some guy drank and got behind the wheel of a car. 40mph into dense smoke is stupidity. No matter what was going on, the fact remains that had that driver been sober, the accident may have been prevented. I don't street race, but I see blame going where it doesn't deserve to be going.

grimesjm1

And while I'm on the subject, how is The Fast and The Furious to blame for street racing? The movie came about from street racing, not vice versa. Besides, I'm sure most of you guys have seen the movie Psyco, how many of you are hacking up women?

Dano 00TA

Thank you!!!

You have to be pretty weak minded to put yours and other peoples lives at risk cause you feel like you have to be like the people in the movie. I used to street race in the mid 80's till I saw a 2nd gen Trans Am hit a tree sideways at a high rate of speed ripping the car completely in half!! Killing 2 of the 4 people instantly. That's all it took to bring me to my senses and give up street racing and taking it to the track. I've had my IROC for 6 years and my Trans Am for 2 and have yet to street race with either and I never will. Your life isn't worth the few seconds of excitment you get from doing it on the street. PLEASE,PLEASE,PLEASE KEEP IT AT THE TRACK!!!!!

JPrevost

grimsjm1, I don't understand your points. You can say the following is a flame but I'm sick and tired of everybody finding only one reason for why something happens! Street racing is dangerous, drunk driving is dangerous, fog/smoky burnouts and bad weather is dangerous. All of these contributed to the accident. You can say it was just the driver but I don't place sole blame on him. If I crossed a road in really bad weather right in front of ANY driver I would be partially to blame for the consiquences.
Yes the drunk driver is the blame in this situation but if the other people weren't doing illegal activities like standing in the middle of the road and racing...then nothing would have happened. It goes both ways and don't even try and tell me there aren't drunk street racers!!!
I place a lot of blame on the movie the Fast and the Furious. You can't compare apples to pinapples (who thought of oranges ). Just because a movie has cutting up a body doesn't mean people are stupid enough to think that's okay to do. The Fast and the Furious showed a few dangerous parts but nothing practical (drive by shootings in day light and on dirt bikes). Notice all the street racers in that movie got away and have their fun that nite! This isn't practical. If the movie didn't want to be so encouraging they should have shown a nasty accident like this fresno one. Have a few people die in the movie and I'm sure it would be more realistic. People die in bad weather but I hate the majority of street racers for one major reason...insurance.
I also blame the movie gone in 60 seconds for making people partial to mustangs . Nice car but a 69 ss would have been just as painful. Hey, while I'm on a roll let's point out that stupid Bambi movie! My parents generation got influenced by it and they think hunting is bad

ChillPhatCat

Edit: almost forgot the topic at hand, sorry about that... I think it's a damn shame that 3 kids are dead because of a street race, that is the biggest reason they are dead, too many bad factors added up were bound to spell disaster. Drinking, stupid people in the road, people doing burnouts etc. It is going to be hell to the driver of the car for the rest of his life, hopefully some of us reading this post will get a wake up call... anyway, my original comments to lighten the mood:


Yeah! and what about Disney films period... notice:

Bambi - Bambi's mother gets shot
Little Mermaid - mother doesn't exist... probably dead
Beauty and the beast - mother dead
Snow White - no parents, 7 horney little men
Pocahontas - mother dead
Cinderella - mother dead and to top it off, evil step mother is introduced
Alladin - no parents for Alladin, Princes' mother implied dead
Tarzan - Kid raised by apes, hot chick's mother is dead
Pinnoccio - only gets some frail old sicilian puppeteer for a fater...
Peter Pan - parental relationship is a nightmare, but Wendy seems to be taking care of the other children... maybe because their mother is dead? nah what kinda crazy idea would that be.

Then there's:
the Jungle Book... no mother, no father

Two movies have a mother

Lion King - Father dies
Sleeping Beauty - both parents present

<h3>Somebody at Disney doesn't like their mother at all</h3>

Anybody got more? I'm sure I missed a couple

I don't remember Herculese and The Prince of Egypt well enough... only seen either of them once... man I've seen a lot of Disney stuff... my sister has all of them... that's the only reason I seen em (yeah right playin mr tough here LOL) I swear!

FAST RS

DAMN someone must either have kids or wacted allot of disney movies

jobryan26

ROFLOL, You've been holding that in for awhile huh! Good point tho.

anesthes

iTrader: (12)

Im not sure what side of the fence i'm on as far as street racing goes. Racing in general is pretty dangerous, trusting a public road is scary.

However, hitting a parked car and a group of people is not "barely" drunk, its more like he was barely sober. Thats unacceptable negligence.

-- Joe

integragsr

how the hell yall gonna blame this on a movie. If your dumb enough to do something cause it was in a movie than you deserve whatever hapens to you.

RB's84camaroF-41

I dont blame it on the movie, I blame it on the dumb **** that did it

muggsyjack

While it can be argued that street racing or any type of racing is dangerous. Every individual must be held responsible for his/her actions. Following a movie line is nonsense. Anyone old enough to drive that can be influenced by a movie does not have the common sense of a doughnut.

Accidents can happen anytime...... racing, drinking and horseplay are not the ultimate root cause, but only an oppertunity. Who kills, the gun or the person pointing and pulling trigger.

Every thing comes down to odds....if you take risks you increase chance of disaster. Anyone drinking and driving is taking too much of a chance and is likely to be disappointed. A couple drinks or a dozen....you cannot be a little pregnant in the eyes of the law if your blood alcohol level is close or over limit. If you drink and drive, even a fender bender can cause you a lot of trouble. You may carry a stigma the rest of your life.

When someone is hurt or killed it is even worse.

loomdog32

ok.. the driver only drank 2 beers 3 hrs before the accident ever happend.. and WE WERE NOT GOING TO THE RACES!!! we were going from one friends house (who lives 2 blocks from where it happened on the street it happened on) to the drivers house.. the exact same thing wouldve happened if he never drank that night..

i would not believe most of the stuff in the newspaper.. according to the paper IM STILL IN CRITICAL CONDITION.. i never was.. ppl around here are tring to blame drunk driving to get around the racing part.. im goin to be taking pics of the scene of the accident fri (before i goto court bout this).. this happened out in the middle of nowhere.. 2 lane road.. orchard on one site... open field on the other..

2 of the ppl we hit, were laying on the road looking under the car stopped in the other lane.. which the car that was in the other lane, btw, the cops are tring to find cuz he took off..

the street races here are nothing like fast and the ferious.. in the fresno area, there are typically 2 racing groups 1) the nip rockets (fart pipe and all) (15-17 sec cars) 2) hot rods (mustangs, camaros, corvettes, viper on occosion) (14-12 sec cars).. they typicall cruise the old highway in town (very popular ting around here.. has been since the 50s).. then they meet up usually at the jack in the box in maliga (its the only jitb in the fresno area that the dining room is open 24hrs everyday).. from there they drive to the race place (lincon and cornilla - thats where this accident happened, henderson between lincon and manning, temprance and central, golden state and jefferson, maple and north, peach and olive.. thats all the places i know of anyways).. ive heard thats theres a web site to goto to find where the races are gonna be..

someone a couple years ago tried to get permits to have a legal FREE drag track, but the county would never give him permits to build it.. noise ordance.. the closest place besides that is Famoso in bakersfield which is about 100 miles away..

loomdog32

keep in mind the was 2am easter morning.. we were under the poster speed limit (55).. and they were standing in the middle of the road.. normally when i see a car comming down the road i dont stand in it..

loomdog32

let me put this exact view of this in front of u.. we were at the beginning of the races at this time (we were goin the opposite direction they were racing).. we were doing 40 mph (below the posted speed limit of 55).. go thru burnout smoke (he did slow down going thru the smoke).. bout 10 ft in front of the smoke there are car stopped in the other lane, car parked off the road on the other side, and ppl sanding between them.. u have about 1 maybe 2 seconds to react.. WHAT WOULD YOU DO????? cant stop.. if we were doin 10 mph we still would have hit something.. he happened to goto the right side of the road.. impossible to avoid the ppl..

loomdog32

this was brought up from a post on gmforums.com.. BEING at illegal street races is illegal in cali..

CVC 23109 (a) - speed contest (street racing)

CVC 23109 (b) - No person shall aid or abet in any motor vehicle speed contest on any highways. (helping, watching street racing)

CVC 23109 (c) - exhibition of speed (burnout)

CVC 23109 (d) - No person shall for the purpose of facilitating or aiding or as an incident to any motor vehicle speed contest or exhibition upon a highway in any matter obstruct or place any barricade or obstruction upon any highway. (blocking off raods for street races or burnouts)

CVC 23109 (i) - Any person who violates subdivision (b), (c), or (d) of this section shall upon conviction thereof be punished by imprisonment in the county jail for not more than 90 days or by fine of not more thanfive hundred dollars ($500) or by both that fine and imprisonment. (punishment - $500 and/or 90 days in jail)

that was taken from an abridged 2001 california vechile code

anesthes

iTrader: (12)

Whats the bac in California? 2 beers an hour is like .05 for a person over 160.. Your friend tiny?

Its a sad situation either way. I feel bad for your friend, that he has to live with this for the rest of his life. And I wasn't there to truely judge the situation. However, my judgement tells me that if people are drag racing on the street,and I see lots of smoke I wait til it passes.

And on the other note, street racing is plain stupid.. I pay a lot of money to race my car at a track. if people can't handle it, then they shouldn't be building fast cars.. 100miles to drive to a track isn't terrible. People come from two states away to race up here on weeekends.

-- Joe

bradkeith

I saw this post and I thought I would add my story. A friend of mine had come over to my house with his parents new car (camry) and asked me if i wanted to race. We went out into the country and started to race. we ran for maybe a 1/4 mile down a lone country road. I was far ahead and i backed off the throttle, i was doing almost 120 when he passed me. Next thing i know he hits his brakes and try to make this left-hand turn onto another road and slides straigh up a utility pole. All i saw was his car go up the pole and this big explosion when the transformer exploded. I turned my car around and went back to help him and luckily he was allright, but damn that scared me. That would have haunted me for the rest of my life. Now when people want to race i say ok, IRP test and tune on sunday?

anesthes

iTrader: (12)

I second that..

FAST RS

its .08 i belive. I was talking to CHP a while back and even tho he dosent condone street raceing he said that when 2 cars race normaly nothin will happen its when the 3rd person who sees it joines in something will happen

88irocz28

0.09 BAC 2 hours after drinking 2 beers? I'm gonna have to call on that one. Not unless the person in question happens to weigh less than 90 lbs. I weigh only 130 lbs, and I blew 0.07 1 hour after consuming 4 beers. By some miracle, the cops let me go. The legal limit here in AR is 0.08. They could have easily had me for a DUI, especially after what I did. It looked to them like I was evading them. I actually backed out of the street because i saw 3 pairs of headlights across the street in the ghetto at 3AM thinking it was a drug deal or hold up. I drove down a parallel street and next thing I know 3 cop cars come flying out of the side streets. I didn't even wait for them to switch their lights on, and pulled right over. Cops were ready to nail me but then lightened up and thought my reason was pulling that 'suspicious' move was pretty funny. Howver, I didn't. The thought of spending the night in jail, massive fines, and suspended license scared the **** out of me. I thank the Lord that it took only that much and not killing someone to prevent me from getting behind the wheel under the influence.

loomdog32, I feel sorry for your friend though. It doesn't seem like drinking was the root cause of this accident. It could have happened to anyone. He was already 15 mph under the limit. However, going through dense smoke at even that speed was utter stupidity. I know plenty of people who think they're hot **** and dive into blind corners, fog clouds, etc being fully aware what might await them at the other side. In most cases they do this to 'scare' the passenger and just look cool . You get away only so many times, but after that it WILL get you. It's not if, it's when.

AlkyIROC

Sorry but the point's been taken, apologies have been made and everyone knows the consequences of street racing.

It's time to put an end to this topic in this forum.