Few problems on our roads can seem as frustrating and as irresolvable as the seemingly perpetual stupidity known as hooning on country roads and in regional towns. The difficulty in solving the problem lies in it being a behavioural issue practised by people who are so dumb they rarely think about their behaviour or its consequences. Threats of punitive justice barley register with such bovine intelligence while the concept of safety to other road users or even themselves is such a faint flicker in the cavernous emptiness of their cognitive capacity, it would almost take a miracle for it to shine into the light of day and change how they act.
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As a clear example of the low grade ore we are dealing with in mining this problem for a solution, think about the motivations for hooning. One hand there is a degree of youthful recklessness flaunting illusory invulnerability or the even less substantial element of juvenile showing-off. If ever there were a disjoint between the narrowness of their thinking and the reality of wider world it is this; every time they spin the wheels, gun the engine or some other gesture of impotent bravado declaring “Look at me in my motor” they remain ignorant that to the rest of the world it is an instantaneous label writ large, “Here passes another idiot.”
But the widespread frustration of the community at this idiocy is also reasonable because it doesn’t end with labels but rather extends to a genuine fear of consequence for others. The Courier only a week ago was flooded with responses about our worst hooning spots and ended up with a list of over five hundred streets. That is a lot of pointless noise and burnt rubber but it is also a lot of potentially fatal scenarios.
This week an alarming incident at Stockland Wendouree proves the point yet again. Even in shopping centre carparks; the stupidity and arrant selfishness of this kind of driver knows few bounds. Fortunately for the pedestrian in question who was able to get out of the way the speeding car was simply an annoyance. But many readers like those who filmed the incident were left wondering what if the pedestrian had been elderly or an infant, a mother with a pram.
It appears the community has to do the thinking that is beyond the capacity of this unfortunately large number of mostly-male halfwits. So it is the community who will have to help the police in their seemingly impossible task of enforcement and even in changing the car culture which is increasingly a brand of shame in country towns.