I don't know how much racing you do, but as far as I've seen, racers do tow their race cars to the track. They rent or own tow trailers and transporters.

Race cars are usually heavily modified and aren't street legal, and the drivers don't want them dinged up on the way to the track, and if they fail while racing they need a way to get it back home.

If you're racing a street-legal car on a track... it's unlikely to be very good at racing, compared to all the other cars there that are stripped to bare minimum.

Perhaps you're thinking of a demographic who can't even afford a second car but like the idea of racing anyway, so they break all laws and race the one car do they have, on public streets without permission, which is strongly disregarding others' preferences for remaining alive, uncrippled, and their vehicles and street furniture remaining unscathed.

You are talking about serious people not street racers. This is not the demographic who's going down my street five nights a week at a hundred mph in clapped out mitsubishi.

It's a spectrum. If you're really serious you buy a trailer and all that. But people do bring their street legal cars to the track all the time. Either because they go to the track as an occasional hobby or they don't have the money to shell out for a second car just for racing (i.e. they're young).

Towing your racecar to the track is an incredibly common thing. You're going to be using your vehicle to its limits, things can go massively wrong. You don't want your only way home to break on the racetrack. Plus you probably have some amount of supporting equipment.

You seem to assume this particular demographic you speak of only does so in venues:

https://komonews.com/news/local/teen-to-be-sentenced-for-hig...

Would you be willing to say the same for firearms and their availability? It meets much of your criteria, sans perhaps the portability part and location of many enthusiasts.

My point is precisely that. How can you hope to encourage people to move to tracks if you require them to find a pickup that can tow cars there? If you keep closing down more and more tracks?

I believe in high availability of firearms because I'm principally against prior restraint. The state doesn't get to take machineguns away from people who haven't demonstrated abuse of them to the standard of reasonable doubt. The state doesn't get to take hellcats away from people who haven't demonstrated abuse of them to the standard of reasonable doubt. That's my moral position, which I assume you don't share, so I'm trying to point out a more practical reason why this is a bad policy in terms of outcome.

> How can you hope to encourage people to move to tracks if you require them to find a pickup that can tow cars there? If you keep closing down more and more tracks?

I doubt most people speeding in the streets do track or street racing as a hobby, so I think track availability is pretty much irrelevant.

I think I should have the freedom not to get splattered by dumbasses going 100 in a 50MPH zone. Why don't I get that freedom?

You are allowed to use the state to restrict the freedom of people who are going 100 in a 50MPH zone. You don't get to use the state to restrict people with a theoretical capacity to go 100 in a 50.

> You don't get to use the state to restrict people with a theoretical capacity to go 100 in a 50.

Says who?

This isn't how I believe free societies should be constructed. It's morally wrong and I really don't care to share a society where people who believe otherwise get to vote, because it's an irreconcilable values break that has no place in America. Safetyists fit much better in places like Europe.

And can you believe it, they even make you wear a seatbelt when driving! Downright communist.

Not communist but this is basically at odds with how we should run. It's a great shibboleth for where people's values lie. I don't think I've ever driven a car without a seatbelt. It's stupid and has no benefit. But I am deeply opposed to any government that says someone must.

This isn't something on which we can compromise or establish bipartisanship, generally, so the conflict will only continue to escalate. There's just no frame in which I can frame a society which mandates seatbelts as good or just. People like you like to use it to deride my values, purposely picking a trivial example to trivialize what I believe. But that's neither constructive nor respectful nor a rebuttal of my views. Those who wish the state to impose safetyism on them should self-segregate into maybe a few states and spare the rest of us having to group together to counteract their votes.

Ideally, the virtue of a federalist system should be that it offers choice in under what regime one elects to live. Strip every vestige of this from the federal government and ensure safetyists can promulgate their desires only at very local levels, so they can go live as they choose, where they choose, without polluting the rest of America.

Anthony Burgess in his novel "A Clockwork Orange"

I used to race cars. Driving a race car on the street is dumb AF. Rollcage will crush your skull if you aren’t helmeted and in the 6-point harness. Suspension is bone jarring (and expensive to maintain). The exhaust is not legal. And on and on.

Nobody races steeet legal cars. Except maybe a few drag racers, and half those cars probably have illegal tires or emissions removals, but they drove on the street anyway.

Source: Many years in the car hobby.

> Nobody races steeet legal cars.

Most people don't but that's an overly broad generalization.

I raced Spec Miata in its early days (2000-2010) and it was possible (and I did) to keep a moderately competitive Spec Miata still street legal. I didn't have space for a trailer so had to drive it to the track.

Ha! I cut my teeth on Spec RX-7. I drove it to the track for a season and it was a terrible idea. The car was nominally legal (catalyst in place, full exhaust). But it was loud AF, the rollcage was dangerous on the street, and getting 4 race wheels in the back with a jack, tools, tent, etc was an endeavor.

Most street racers have some illegal modifications, but the guy driving the riced-out kia isn't really safety-conscious. The hope is to use punishment to shove those people towards tracks (which more people might use if they hadn't been pushed out by noise complaints and such).

Is the guy in the riced out Covic or whatever really interested in the track? Actual racing would require most car prep, different insurance (or none), more effort overall. The generic car person is doing it for social reasons, not because they want competition.

He might capitulate and put up with it if tracks were more common and not pushed out everywhere and if punishments for specifically street racing were increased. Plenty of places "takeovers" should be addressed by bringing about a dozen cop cars and arresting everyone but aren't.

Sure. Or if you don't want to have to tow a non-street-legal vehicle to move it on public streets, we could probably include a provision for GPS/vision-based dynamic speed limiting, allowing you to make your vehicle automatically street legally-speed-limited on public streets where others are at risk, and unlimited off public streets. The technology already exists and is very reliable for this.