Street takeovers: enuff already

I put most of the blame n the movie series that started with The Fast and the Furious--the reckless show off driving displays with no thought toward protecting innocent onlookers.
Just this last weekend (2nd weekend of May) there's been two, with crashes and bloodshed.
The scene is always the same--smoke, cars in two or in some cases four wheel drifts. Only the participants seem to have become even stupider, now they've added leaving the passenger door open, with one or more occupants hanging dangerously out. What will they do next--strap babies on the hood?
It is no small irony to me that the leading actor in the early F & F movies--Pau Walker- was killed in real life doing a show off stunt on a public road when his partner in a side gig used exotic car business--showed up at a charity event to offer Walker a chance to demonstrate a Porsche he had bought. Only they did the showing off on a public road, hit an over-the-ground gas line which of course exploded once the Porsche hit it at speed and burst into flames. I can guess it was not an open casket funeral. So ironically in real life Paul Walker was killed trying to do the same stunts that high priced stunt drivers did in his movies (where there were many safety precautions) .
I know it's ironic--I've written books on Cobras, Ferraris and other high performance cars, and here I am saying "stop showing off." Well, there's a place for showing your driving prowess--. a place with guard rails, a place with medics standing by. A place with painted lines at the corners. It's called a racetrack.


The authorities are talking confiscation of the cars caught doing stunts at these impromptu amateur stunt performances, I'd go one step further--confiscation of the driver's license of the driver, and public sale of their car(s) with proceeds going to victims--those innocent bystanders killed by heir recklessness.
It's also akin to the rowdies on air flights--some airlines forbidding the unruly passenger from flying on their airline again. I agree with those crying for banning them from US fights forever. Who knows if some unexplained airliner crashes could've been crashed because of an unruly passenger?
So to deter street takeover banditos, there's got to be some punishment that will discourage them--a ban on them being licensed in all 50 States? I don't know what would work.
I also put some of the blame on Dodge who back in 2015 began running 30- and 90-second ads, titled "Predators," featuring all their "bad boys" -- a Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat, a Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat, and a Dodge Viper GTS, all roaming the night freely on deserted city streets, doing impromptu spinouts a every opportunity, as if this was a perfectly normal condoned activity.
The present situation with takeovers is comparable to a situation where people want to show off their full automatic weapons. Now if you get the license for an automatic, you can do it a certain ranges There's even an annual convention for full automatic devotees. And no one gets hurt. But no gunmaker sponsors TV commercials that show full automatic owners walking down city streets shooting everything in sight.
OK call me a curmudgeon, but we're seeing tragedies happen that don't have to happen....
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