I don’t know what it is in the nature of men that makes them like to drive fast. Now I don’t mean just over the speed limit, because without cruise control to exert a little influence, my wife will come home bristling with speeding tickets, while I tend to stick to just a little above—the calculated area of “they won’t bother to ticket me here”. I mean the “let’s see what it can do” style of driving that men seem drawn to, certainly more often when they are a little younger and a lot more foolhardy.

Lately, young men of average means have an interest in cars that just look serious…. Honda Civics and even Chevy Cavaliers dressed up with wings and body fairings, fancy paint jobs, mufflers that sound like you have more under the hood than a four-cylinder designed primarily for economy, and the ubiquitous booming of a thousand watt stereo system with trunk-filling subwoofer. One went by with a lot of noise the other day and I asked, “What was that?” My wife identified it correctly as, “A Cavalier trying to pretend it’s a sports car.”

There is little doubt that these relatively bargain basement “racers” are bound to occasionally challenge each other at the stop lights, and there is certainly danger, particularly in city traffic, that something is going to slip and an innocent driver or pedestrian will suffer. It’s happened before, only recently with two fatalities in Dartmouth, and it will happen again.

It doesn’t matter if it’s today’s souped-up Cavalier or the old man’s Belair, there has always been the thrill of motor power and performance to struggle against—you can’t keep it bottled up forever inside and live only on the engine noises. I blame young men, but the age keeps climbing higher before we see even a trace of maturity, and more and more we hear of young women getting into the act as well, admittedly only an aberration in the maturity they usually have when it comes to motor vehicles.

There are no doubt quiet fellows with pocket protectors who have never dared push their vehicle beyond the speed limit, but too many of us fall victim at some time to the “see what it will do” notion (or “she will do”– cars are female, like a lot of things men relate to) and we take “her” out to a relatively deserted highway to find out. I can’t claim I didn’t myself, and it was 120 mph+ in a ’71 Torino with a 351 Cleveland V8 (women, and men with pocket protectors, ignore this autospeak). Now my feat in metric would be almost 200 km/h, which certainly seems a lot faster— at least there is one advantage to the metric system!

Now in retrospect, that was foolish, and while exciting at the time, it was also downright scary. I can recall taking it up to that speed, and immediately down again to a safe level. While the Torino was a powerful car, it was certainly not a race car, and would not have been a safe haven for something like a tire blowout, not to mention even a bend in the road at that speed.

A rite of passage for some of us, but a rite that has changed with the times to an even more dangerous level. Some of our young men now have a lot more money than we ever did, particularly in the Canadian west with the oil field wealth, and their tastes have been directed toward more expensive, exotic, and definitely capable vehicles. Calgary, lately the home of a lot of money, has been having its difficulties with a higher number of road racers. The apartment parking spaces of more and more young men are holding things like Ferraris and Lamborghinis, cars that often carry $200,000 – $300,000 price tags, and whose design is very much to go fast—very, very fast.

It’s obviously not in the nature of men to have a Lamborghini in the driveway, with a speedometer that reads beyond 300 km/h, and never take it over the speed limit. It’s going to happen. Otherwise they would buy over seven Hondas instead, and rotate them by color and the day of the week.

Evidence of this behavior can be seen on the Internet on sites like U-Tube, where videos are posted recording many of the “see what she will do” adventures. A recent one that is drawing Canadian attention involves several exotic cars being taken out on a prairie highway in the early hours of dawn and there running speed tests– cameras mounted on seatbacks to record the highway, with inset shots of the speedometers to share the passion. The winner of this event topped out at 340 kph, and while the drivers are easily identifiable, to the questioning police the official word is that the run was false, just staged video. Most observers, including the police, feel it was actually quite true, but difficult to prove without being there with the radar gun (if the gun even goes that high).

Another video on YouTube takes us with a seatback video camera on a run along a interstate highway, neither at night nor in low traffic, with other cars being passed and assorted hazards emerging along the way— the speed here reaching near 300 kph, and certainly endangering the lives of many, not to mention the driver. This racing entrepreneur originally sold copies of his video adventure, until he sold and certified one too many to an undercover cop and was arrested.

A number of police cruiser videos show some of these cars being pursued, with the chase often called off because even a Crown Victoria Police Pursuit cannot hope to keep up with these aerodynamic machines skimming the pavement on huge racing tires.

The headline in today’s Chronicle-Herald cries for stiffer penalties for street racers, and, despite my “see what it will do” history, I’m forced to agree. My experience was a one-timer, memorable only for its stupidity with a $500 Torino that I fixed in my driveway, not a Lamborghini that was built for that speed. In my defense, I’ll say that I was all alone on a deserted highway and the feat probably lasted all of five minutes above the posted speed. Racing adds the additional dimension of competition that raises the male stupidity to even higher levels, and the speed and power of the new machines makes it certain that someone getting seriously hurt will be a regular news event.

At the same time, it’s heading upwind to battle the practice, as much as it should be done. No doubt they raced the Model T down dusty streets in front of the village hardware store, and no doubt they raced the chariots in more than just the coliseum, whenever they met at the traffic lamps on the corner of Olive and Vine.

We struggle against our nature. Often not hard enough.