Brian Lohnes: Dragging, Driving and Johnny Law — A Match Weirdly Made In Heaven
If there’s been one thing that’s held as a constant in the nearly two decade history of drag-and-drive events, it’s the weirdly positive relationship that competitors have been able to maintain, by and large, with the police. Yes, there have been and will be citations handed out over the course of time, but when we stop and think about what have now been thousands of ragged-edge street cars cruising the highways and byways of America, the number of times that “license, registration, and proof of insurance, please,” have been uttered through a driver’s window by a large officer is exceptionally small.
Summer is the best time to buy cheap hoodies!
It's seemingly one of this type of competition’s great self-regulating things. Yes, there’s fun to be had out there (I’m looking at you, trailer burnouts), and the occasional rip to “clean the carb out” happens on the highway but let’s be real here. Driving like an idiot and abusing your car on the highway will lessen your chances of making the next drag strip and thereby completing the event. There’s the fact that you have sweat, bled, cried, and sworn over the vehicle that you are driving as well and doing something dumb to tear it up or cause it harm doesn’t make a ton of sense, either. Lastly there’s the safety of those you are traveling with. So often it’s a tight friend, your kids, your family members, etc. All of these things add up to the incentive to enjoy the cruise. You wouldn’t believe how shocked most people are that I talk to when they ask how “crazy” people get on the road and I explain that most competitors, depending on their class and how serious their equipment is, are rolling down the highway at 60-70mph and that’s about it.
Early on in this thing, we were literally wondering if we’d ever end up with a Cannonball Run style roadblock at some point with people being stopped, inspected for legality, etc. Obviously those fears were completely unfounded but we didn’t know any better.
Sick Summer saw the town of Fulton’s police and fire departments welcome racers.
I have always seen competitors be respectful of the small towns and cities that are passed through during these events, as well. These days people gather along the routes to see the cars come by and this of course gets the attention of the local gentry, usually. Ninety-nine times out of 100 these officers are into hot rods and cars as well and have their phones out to snap photos of the passing iron. It’s a prideful thing for anyone involved in this section of the sport to understand that you carry a banner of legitimacy because of the respect shown by the competitors before you in the places they visited. It would not take but a couple of bad headlines about marauding hot rodders swooping into a town and causing problems to negatively impact people’s attitudes. It would quickly ruin the whole scene.
Speaking of ruining the whole scene, there’s a story many of you likely do not know. About a decade ago there was a drag-and-drive competitor who also happened to be a lawyer and, for reasons known only to him, he decided (after being disgruntled for some reason), to prepare and file paperwork with the Department of Transportation listing the ways that many drag-and-drive vehicles were violating Federal safety regulations in their construction and because of that they should not be allowed on Federal highways as they posed a risk to the operators and the other people on the road. I’m not kidding. Only a handful of people likely know anything about this but it happened and thankfully it went nowhere.
Bad actors aside, the drag-and-drive world is filled with the kinds of people we all want to spend time around. Industrious, responsible (perhaps up for debate), passionate, and motivated. The kind of people who take pride in their mechanical creations, the kind of people who respect the places they visit, and the kind of people who can roll through small town America and instead of getting chased out of town they get thumbs up from law enforcement, draw crowds to the sidewalks, and put smiles on everyone, even the officers they rumble past.
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