[Red October1984]

Originally Posted by Schroeder

OK, now I'll write the thing again that I had deleted.

I respect this.

The fact that you try to race your new car already just adds to my opinion that you should NOT HAVE a high powered car.

Being 100% honest, I've never been in a real race with anybody. The closest thing that I've done is go about 400 yards on a completely empty road in the lane next to a friend.

Just "mine's bigger than your's"?

Concept barely applies to 4-cylinders...but I know what you're saying.

Are you really on that level?

It's more talk than anything else. I give my Honda-driving friends crap but at the end of the day wheels are wheels. It's just friendly jabs more than it's apes beating on their chest.

It doesn't make you a better person to have a faster car than someone else. It doesn't meant that you have "defeated" him in any way.

You know when you have managed to drive for 5 years without incident then you are perhaps ready for a car with more than 150HP but right now I see trouble ahead. It's not only your own life you are playing with but you are also disrespecting the lives of everyone else on the road if you race other cars.
Sorry for these harsh words but we are loosing so many young people to accidents with high powered cars and I lost people I know to those accidents too.

I understand completely where you're coming from. I have a close friend who has lost 4 family members to terrible car accidents. Every summer, I work at a Youth Traffic Safety Conference organized by a local police department and sponsored by the state. I've talked to enough victims and families....i've seen pictures of what happens. I've even covered myself in fake blood/gore and climbed into a wrecked car to act out what happens at the conference.

I hear you and I want to say that I would never do anything unnecessary to endanger anybody's life. Practicing my powershift on a completely empty flat road at 10PM is one thing, but true street racing is really dangerous and the roads are too curvy in my area to do that.

My two accidents have more to the story than what was on Subsim. Yes, the first one I attempted to move into the left lane...No, it did not work. It's something I'd done fifty times but the landscape didn't allow it at that point in time. It happened too fast. What happened happened and I'm moving on. I think that the experiences have made me a better driver.

When I hit the dog, I had 3 choices. My little brother was in the car with me and we were going to school. There were 2 large dogs and a small dog in the road. I wasn't going to run off into the steep treelined ditch, so I tried to split the gap but the small dog matched my movements. I had no choice but to hit it. Once again, the landscape didn't allow much of a choice. If I slammed on the brakes and skidded, I would've wrapped the car around one of many trees lining the road. If it hit one of the bigger dogs, I would've totaled the car easily.

As a fan of cars, I like to throw a jab at rivals...jabs I will probably never back up with a race unless it is on a proper track and I'm not unnecessarily endangering anybody else. When I talk about adding power to my car, I'm talking way down the road. That gets expensive and dangerous and I can't do that working part time at a grocery store and going to school.

I respect your post and what you have to say. I completely agree. Too many people are dying in car accidents. I've met people who have had traumatic brain injuries who have major disabilities. I've nearly had one myself and now I tell my story to a new group of young high schoolers I work with every summer.