Everyone Should Drive A Race Car

Americans are always crowing about safety in automobiles. You: a soft, squishy bag of guts and sinews regularly plop yourself into a very hard and unforgiving metal cocoon filled with explosive fuel and race down the road at speeds far exceeding even the fastest Olympic runner. Nature did not design us for going from 65mpg to 0 in an instant. Bad things tend to happen in such cases. And yet, most of us don't hit anything and make it home alive at the end of the day. Still, thousands of us don't and this is very sad. There's nothing fun about a car accident. It can really ruin your day. But really, if the American dream of quasi-immortality and safety obsession really put its money where its mouth is, I propose the following.

Everyone should drive a race car. Only the race car would have a smaller engines that only went as fast as regular cars. Most of the pro sport auto racing crashes you see are just spectacular explosions of parts at high speeds, but then the damn driver JUMPS out of the car and he's relatively unhurt. There's none of this sissyboycrap; "Oh gee I'm hurt! Oh no, my legs are trapped under the engine block...boo hoo! Oh poor me, my intestines are stretched on a road sign for a quarter mile...waaah!" Those guys usually make it out well enough to go beyond fundamental mortal concerns like "Wow, I'm still alive" straight into "Oh shit I lost the race!" The car saved their ass. Oh sure, maybe a tire flew into the stands and took out a couple two 'tree people, but hey that's collateral damage. The price you pay for watching a dangerous race.

Now just take that designed-to-dissipate-energy car body and drive it at a fraction of the speed and Joe Sixpack would almost be immortal behind the wheel. Am I crackers? If people stopped caring about their hair and clothing it would seem to make all sorts of sense to put on the full face helmet and leathers for the morning commute and strap into the roll cage with a 5-point harness. People are always crowing about safety but won't go all the way. Oh sure, that would mean cars would cost millions of dollars, but the way I figure with everyone driving one and without having to worry so much about all the fine tuning of an actual race car the prices would be reduced. Not to mention the lucrative sponsorship money you'll get. But there will be sacrifices; when you exit your car in the parking lot at work people will run up to you and immediately slap a baseball cap on your head. A small price to pay methinks.

I think many folks will be pleased as punch if they could go beyond simply collecting the highly attractive and tasteful Nascar merchandise and actually commute to work in a real Nascar race car. I suppose the low speeds will make it not as cool, but remember we're all about safety here. This plan is for dramatically reducing traffic fatalities, not fulfilling the desire for racing action!

Now all we have to do is pass some legislation on this and get it going. It's a good idea and good ideas should be made into law. Anyone who doesn't drive a racecar is better off in jail. Hey, I didn't make the rules I just obey them. OBEY!