Maximum Speed, Minimum Forethought

There’s a certain wild Coloradoan out there who used to claim that US 85 through South Carolina was the most deadly stretch of road in the country. Of course he’s been known to loudly proclaim his own divinity and once found an Easter ham in the back of his truck…in August. But I digress. MuggleMarc’s post below got me thinking about the peculiar seductive amorality of speed. I don’t know if the Coloradoan in question was correct, but I kind of hope so. Reckless acceleration benefits from a certain glamour that other forms of disregard for public safety just can’t match. Perhaps that’s why we find guys like Lalouche so fascinating?

Of course, as Americans, we’ve been Intelligently Designed to do everything bigger and better - so back in 1983 a few individuals gifted with more luck than wisdom managed the trip from New York to Los Angeles in 32 hours 7 minutes. They were taking part in an underground road race called the US Express, which was apparently the direct descendent of another, more famous, race that I had always assumed to be fictional. But don’t be fooled into thinking that the last twenty years have made the roads any safer. Today’s incarnation of the race is called Bullrun and though the website seems to concentrate more on the b-list celebrities involved than it does on body-mangling velocity – this participant sets the record straight in the first sentence of his review of (you guessed it) radar detectors.

By the way - Steve’s divinity notwithstanding, the ham was a total loss.