Chicaboo and LordWorm have their day in court...

[LordWorm]

Well, as some of you already know, Chicaboo and myself were both charged with holding an illegal street race in the Gap about a month ago.

Charges specifically refer to a "suspicion" of the activity, and we had our vehicles impounded for a period of 48 hours and were required to attend the magistrates court today.

Both of us decided to plead guilty to the charges, and the police report was read out.

Police report noted that both vehicles accelerated hard whilst generating an enormous amount of tyre smoke. Police vehicle was travelling in the opposite direction and spotted us 100m from the set of traffic lights where the alleged race took place, did a U-Turn and persued.

Neither of us at any point exceeded the speed limit, and it was just a case of flat to the floor dash to 60kph that was the posted limit.

We both saw the flashing lights and pulled into the left hand lane believing at the time that the police were on a call out (at this stage, we've done nothing but chirp the wheels slightly on a launch, and accellerated in an agressive fashion, and had no reason to believe we would be pulled over).

We both testified that we did not exceed the limit (police report stated they "believed" we were exceeding the limit by an excessive amount, the magistrate threw this out as they had no evidence of it).

as for the smoke part - We both apparently reached some inordinate speed whilst liquefying our tires in a hellish display of top fuel drag racer style burnout, so much so that drivers behind us would not have been able to see... as much as we'd both LOVE to believe our cars are capable of such a feat (creating that much smoke whilst accelerating hard enough to be considered dangerous) - we all know that sub 100kW front wheel drive 4 bangers are absolutely incapable of this action.

Anyway... long story short, despite the fact that the magistrate wanted to throw us out with a slap on the wrist fine, he is bound by QLD law to give us a 6 month suspension of drivers licence, despite Chicaboo's pleas from his doctor that he cannot walk the distances required of him to catch public transport. Work licenses on both cases were refused.

The allegation made out that we DELIBERATELY organized a race, and thats the reason we were out there....which wasn't the case at all.

Funny thing is, some pissed idiot in the court room today was let off with a 1 month suspension for having a BAC of 0.118, failing to follow a direction to an RBT station and running a redlight - and it was his 3 offence!

Another kid admitted to doing a full blown Tokyo drift style hectic maneuver near a crowd of nearly 500 people in the valley, no suspension $100 fine!.

Moral of the story - the media beat up of "hoons" and street racers seems to have done its job - driving quickly to, but never exceeding the speed limit is considered more dangerous and carries a larger fine and penalty than driving in a dangerous pissed repeat offender speeding through a red light.

Its not worth while doing ANYTHING on the road that could even VAGUELY construed as hooning. Any loss (and i mean any, pop the clutch accidentally, or miss-estimate the traction of the surface in the rain) of traction WILL result in a MANDATORY 6 month license suspension.

Fun and games.

And for the record - it would seem both of us lost this race....