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Cars

A different spin on racing

Cops Against Racing on Streets joins with the schools to stress safety and discourage students from reckless driving.

By MARTY CLEAR
Published October 7, 2005

Officer Randy Davis works with high school kids all the time, and he likes them a lot. He even used to be one himself.

One thing he has learned is that we all tend to feel immortal when we're that age. Telling kids who love hot cars that they shouldn't race in the streets because they might get killed usually doesn't work. They'll listen but when their adrenaline gets pumping out on the streets, the warnings from grownups don't enter their thoughts.

Davis has served with the Tampa Police Department for 22 years, and for the past decade or so he has worked in Hillsborough County schools, mostly focusing on driving safety issues. He became increasingly concerned about the rising number of deaths from kids, and adults, racing on the streets, so he decided to do something about it.

What he did was to create a brand-new program called CARS, which stands for Cops Against Racing on Streets. It was introduced into the county's 23 public high schools in August.

"I've really been working on it for about three years, just doing research and pulling out statistics and mostly talking to kids," Davis said. "I probably went through 10 different ideas before I came up with this program. I wanted it to be something that would be effective. I didn't want to do it just for the sake of doing it."

Because it's so new, and because no one else in the country is doing anything quite like it, Davis doesn't know for sure yet whether the program will indeed be effective. But he has worked closely enough, and long enough, with kids that he's pretty sure he knows what they'll respond to.

CARS actually takes a two-pronged approach. The first is an educational program, designed by Davis and taught by school resource officers during regular driver's education classes.

"We don't preach to them because that will only turn them off," Davis said. "Instead we try to inform them."

Traditionally, driving safety programs focus on the possibility of injury and death, and they try to prevent teens from racing at all. But that doesn't always work with young people.

"They have that invincibility thing," he said. "So we start from the equipment, from the damage you do to your car. Like, every time you do a burnout, you take 500 miles of normal wear off your tires. And then we get into damage you can do to the transmission and other parts of your car."

One reason people race is because they're proud of their cars, Davis said, so showing them that unsafe driving is bad for the car is often effective.

The curriculum starts with equipment, but then moves into physical safety and even the psychological elements of racing.

It's all done with a different attitude than most street racing programs around the country, Davis said.

Kids - and adults for that matter - just like racing, so simply telling them to stop is a waste of breath.

"People have been racing since the horse and buggy days," Davis said. "People have always raced and they always will. I've been racing myself all my life, since I was 16. So we don't tell them that racing is bad, we just tell them that there's a right way to do it, that you can do it safely. The street just isn't the place to do it."

The other approach CARS takes is to institute a car club in each of the county's public high schools.

The clubs include both adults and students. The main focus of the clubs are a series of car shows that will rotate through the schools.

The idea of the shows is that kids who are attracted to cool cars will talk to the owners, all of whom are educated about racing safety issues.

"What we want to get across," Davis said, "is that it's great to have a cool car, but you can still drive safely."

Two constant presences at the shows will be the CARS program's own vehicles, a modified Honda Civic and a Suzuki Huyabusa.

Both the car and the motorcycle were confiscated from a local heroin dealer, so they didn't cost the Police Department anything. Modifications and additions that the heroin dealer didn't do himself - like a flashy and powerful sound system - come courtesy of several local businesses that donated labor and materials.

Besides helping make the community safer, the businesses that contribute to the program get to put their logos on the car or bike. Response has been so enthusiastic, Davis said there's little more the program needs.

"I could come up with a laundry list of dozens of things that we'd like, but really there's only one thing we need right now," he said. "We transport these things in a van, and we need to put a vinyl wrap on the van. If we could get someone to donate that, we'd be in great shape."

- For more information about the CARS program visit the Web site at http://www.tampagov.net/dept_police/CARS

[Last modified October 6, 2005, 08:25:09]