canadians banning performance modifications to automobiles?

[brucewayne]

A tragedy on Toronto streets that claimed the lives of a pair of enthusiasts has once again set alight political fires alight by those looking to ban performance modifications to automobiles.

Whether the deaths are attributable to street racing remains up for debate, but the event has triggered calls for the banning of go-fast bits like nitrous oxide.

Wheels' chief scribe Jim Kenzie rants in the Toronto Star that taking such action is little better than conclusions drawn from overly simplistic metaphors like:

Prostitutes wear short skirts. That woman is wearing a short skirt.
Therefore, she's a prostitute.

Said another way, banning aftermarket parts and the tuner culture would be to wrongly attack a symptom, not the problem of street racing itself.

What do you think about street racing and the efforts made to prevent it? Sound off in comments!

[Sources: Toronto Star; PopCenter.org]

 

[djdrock]

I always thought Canada was better than that! Shame on them. Ridiculous.

 

[Tony Montoya]

I always thought Canada was better than that! Shame on them. Ridiculous.

We haven't banned anything yet. It 's just a knee-jerk reaction to an unfortunate situation.

 

[satan_srv]

They're just trying to put in legislation to increase penalties for acidents and deaths where 'street racing' is involved.

Kenzie's article: http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Co...pageid=970599109774&col=Columnist979101296646

Anyway they aren't banning anything...already existing laws such as reckless or careless driving and their many derivations cover this already. The current government likes to try and do 'targeted' initiatives that affect very few people, but look like it's accomplishing a lot. thousands die every year from drunk driving...what are they doing to stop that??

Anyway proving racing is quite impossible, so it's irrelevant at the end of the day you can fight it and win.

 

[rickysals]

I realize Canada is a different country & all, so I dunno what their form of the constitution says - but it'd be a heck of infringement on rights in my opinion - over something that really will not prevent street racing at all.

So what if someone puts $5000 into their $10000 civic, and still only has 160HP. Anyone of those kids could buy a V8 Camaro or Mustang and have 250+ HP easily stock.

In my opinion this will just satisfy old-school conservative thinking people who think the earth is going to hell in flames because of things that in reality aren't the source of whatever problem they're having or just because they don't like something. Putting out a performance part ban will not stop street racing. There are plenty cars out there that have the power to have fun/race without a single modification. I agree with satan_srv that there are more pressing traffic problems (in every area of north america) like drunk driving that need to have even more attention, instead of what really is a handful of people that burn around in their ricerockets.

 

[Meeyatch1]

We haven't banned anything yet. It 's just a knee-jerk reaction to an unfortunate situation.

Not yet....but as I recall, adding simple modifications like lowering springs can completely VOID your auto insurance in Canada. From what I understand that was done in response to the import car culture and having them singled out as being too risky by auto insurance companies.