Asian girl racers terrorise Los Angeles streets

A new wave of young Asian women are causing death and mayhem on the boulevards of Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES: As the tachometer red-lines, the girl racer yanks up the handbrake and spins her Honda Civic 180 degrees into the oncoming traffic that is shuffling out of the Universal film studio north of Hollywood.

She is screaming along to a punk band on the radio as commuters pull abruptly into the kerb, horns honking, a Los Angeles Police Department cruiser glimpsed and then left far behind in her dust as she speeds away at almost 80mph.

Jackie Q, the daughter of a South Korean oncologist, is a straight-A high school student who dreams of studying medicine at Stanford University, California.

She stands 5ft 2in tall in her driving stilettos. At weekends, unbeknown to her doting parents, who believe her car obsession is safer than boys, she is a high-octane force among a new wave of young Asian women who are causing death and mayhem on the wide avenues and choked boulevards of Los Angeles.

In a city shaped by automobiles, the illegal street race is a time-honoured macho tradition. The quarter-mile straight-line drag race altered little between James Dean in 1955s Rebel without a Cause and Vin Diesel’s more muscular cars in The Fast and the Furious in 2001.

But police say girls such as Jackie Q and her friend, who calls herself Daisy Dooks — after the Dukes of Hazzard character played by Jessica Simpson in the recent remake — are changing the rules.

“The Asian girls are a new thing,” said Chris Ortell, a police sergeant in east Los Angeles.

He is dealing with a 17-year-old Asian girl who raced her Ford Focus through a crowded street at 80mph before striking another car and killing its teenage occupant.

That racer escaped with scratches and, as a minor, will probably be put on probation for three years, the police officer said wearily.

Street racers are causing more than 100 deaths a year in Los Angeles county, twice as many as 10 years ago. For the first time, many such deaths are being caused by teenage girls.

“The Asian girls are not copying Hollywood movies,” Ortell said last week. “They were raised playing their brothers’ video games, a dozen titles which feature street races, and believe that they can hit a wall and walk away.

In the past they would have Nadine Toyoda, above, has gone legit but — along with characters such as Daisy Duke, right, played by Jessica Simpson — is a big influence on illegal racers been spectators, but now they are drivers. And they are killing themselves and others.”

Two weeks ago Californian lawmakers raised the penalties on both illegal street racers — who can now be forced to witness their Nissan 240SX or Lancia being destroyed by a scrap-yard crusher — and spectators, who can be fined for encouraging them.