Street Racing

Street racing is a form of auto racing taking place on public roads, either during normal traffic or during empty hours of traffic, often within the city area. It is the only form of illegal auto racing since all traffic regulations forbid the type of driving involved in such racing. Virtually all street races are hunted down by police due to extreme danger to the participants as well as innocent bystanders. The speeds in a usual illegal street racing run reach over 100 miles per hour (160 km/h) and crashes are very likely. Due to high speeds, fatalities and major injuries are very common.

Most common form of street racing is a drag race of modified stock cars happening late nights on a partially, but certainly illegally closed straight public road with a very low traffic. Note that professional drag racers who race on sanctioned drag strips will take offence to calling street racing a 'drag race'. The driving forces behind illegal street races are many, lack of a nearby drag strip, the temptation of illegality of such a race, which could be interrupted by a police squad any time, or just the similarity to a day to day situations at the traffic lights. Streetracing is also a growing business with streetracers being influential consumers of aftermarket tuning parts. It is even possible to find professional streetracers in these days, however contradicting it may sound. Nonetheless streetracing should be considered as an integral part of the underground portion of the urban lifestyle, and has been since the middle of the 20th century.

In some places there have been legal street races (sometimes called "blackrace"). This is not the same as road racing and it's strictly an amateur sport with road legal vehicles. Usually the races are done on a closed road and run on time and not against another vehicle.

In rural Japan, racers slide around the corners of remote winding mountain passes, as portrayed in the manga/anime Initial D. This "sport" is called "touge", and originated drifting.