Although Wairarapa police have some sympathy for boy racers “with nowhere else to go”, they have confirmed they will be coming down hard on anyone doing burnouts on public roads in the region.
Wairarapa Police area prevention manager, Senior Sergeant Gill Flower, said only those who have committed an offence will be targeted by police and that there will be serious consequences
for those individuals.
“I have sympathy that they legitimately want to meet up and I don’t think the general group is anti-social,” Flower said.
“It’s just when they start to use the roads in such a manner that it scares the public, and it damages the road – we have to take action where people are irresponsible.”
With up to 300 cars hitting Wairarapa’s roads on December 30, Flower noted that the intense number of vehicles would have been “very, very scary for the community”.
“It is quite intimidating to the general public, they [boy racers] need to understand that side of it,” she said.
While she recognised that there are no designated drifting pads available for the groups that travelled to the region for their December 30 meet-up, Flower said police are now aware of four people who were hit by a car “with sustained loss of traction” at the event, with one of them needing medical attention at the local hospital.
“It’s [drifting] a very technical thing to do; it’s not easy, but it needs to be done safely and not on a public road,” she said.
“When they go and scare the public, that’s when we will go in.”
