CARLTON FLETCHER: Recent drag-racing deaths do little to slow Albany drivers

I can’t drive … 55.

– Sammy Hagar

You’re lying in bed, can’t sleep and it’s 4 a.m. Other than ambient “house noises,” the silence is complete.

Then, suddenly, as if to shatter your peaceful existence, you hear it … MWOOOOOAAAARRR! As if Satan himself had left his dominion for a romp on Earth, the noise is startling in its abruptness and its volume. After all, you live a couple of blocks off any of the main drags in town, and you have R-13 insulation packed throughout your home.

The noise? It’s one of the seemingly hundreds, probably dozens, of self-anointed street racers who force people who drive the speed limit off the roads in the daytime and really take over the streets when most people are home in bed.

Over the past weekend, two of the racers crashed in a post-midnight drag race, killing two people, including a 4-year-old child. (Of course, the logical among us would ask what kind of parent would have their 4-year-old child out at a drag race after midnight, but that’s another issue for another time.)

The two racers, one of whom left the scene before turning himself in, police said, were issued a small fine and allowed to go on with their lives. The two people who died … their lives are over.

Every week, this publication receives a dozen or so complaints from readers who say they are terrorized, annoyed, disturbed, endangered by these foolish people who try to turn every section of road – from traffic light to traffic light – into a mini race track. They weave in and out of traffic, most of them with their loud mufflers roaring, frightening drivers who are merely trying to get from Point A to B.

And while, as earlier noted, they really come out at night, you don’t have to look hard to find these arrested development adolescents at any time on any street. Hell, sitting here in this downtown Albany office, two blocks away from the local law enforcement center, we hear these Smokey and the Bandit wannabes roaring down the streets, unimpeded, at all hours of the day.

Complainers who have encountered these speed demons note that they use daredevil tactics that endanger the lives of other drivers on the city’s busiest streets, and they admit to massive frustration when they are forced out of traffic by a speeding vehicle with a law enforcement vehicle nearby, seemingly unmoved by any number of traffic violations.

The recent crash that killed two is one of a handful of local speed-related wrecks that have ended with loss of life. And it’s led to a rallying cry among local drivers who say enough is enough, that it’s time for someone – anyone – to take action.

But as I slammed on brakes this morning to elude a dumb-a$$ driver who cut in front of me with inches to spare to beat me to a traffic light and execute a right-hand turn, I realized that even the death of a 4-year-old kid is not enough to slow these people down.

I’ve never understood the thrill of traveling at fast speeds in a 2,000-pound hunk of metal and plastic that can easily become a tomb when its careless driver wraps it around a tree or a light pole.

I don’t know if our local law enforcement agencies have traffic divisions any more. It would be nice to know they still exist, that there are officers charged with stopping this kind of dangerous driving. But when someone told me – and this is only rumor – that local officers are some of the drivers who race on local streets, one thought became clear to me: The body count is only going to go higher.

Email Carlton Fletcher at [email protected].