Street racing (part two): Ontario's top 20 and the GTA's hot zone

PAWEL DWULIT/TORONTO STAR

This week's map, showing Ontario's top 20 postal areas for street racing suspension rates, looks very different from the drunk driving map from a few weeks ago.

The drunk driving map was rural, small-town and northern, while the street racing map is strongly centred in the GTA. Only three communities on the street racing top 20 list are outside the GTA and Dufferin County: Petawawa, Aylmer, and Hanmer, north of Sudbury. (The only community to appear on both maps is Petawawa.)

There is a very strong pattern of high street racing rates in an area stretching northwest from Vaughan, covering all of Caledon and Orangeville and stretching into Dufferin County. Only part of this pattern was visible last week.

The street racing age graph is different from the drunk driving graph, with its two peaks in early adulthood and middle age - it simply peaks at 21 and declines.

17% of the drivers suspended for street racing were female, about the same proportion that we saw with impaired driving. Unlike drunk driving, the age graph for female street racers looks more or less identical to the age graph for male ones.

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I omitted FSAs with fewer than five suspensions during the period. For the record, here are the areas dropped from the top 20 list:

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Map of the Week: Street racing (part one)

AARON LYNETT/TORONTO STAR

Licence suspensions for street racing, September 30, 2007 to September 12, 2008, per 1,000 by postal area.

In the Greater Toronto Area, street racing (map) seems to be centred in the area of Peel between Orangeville and Brampton, spilling over into nearby areas of York Region around Kleinburg and Woodbridge.

The one standout exception to the general pattern is M5J, the postal area that takes in the waterfront condos downtown. This is, I hope coincidentally, the neighbourhood across Yonge St. from the Toronto Star. M5J has the third-highest rate in the GTA, and (not to give away next week's map) the fifth-highest rate in the province.

Other than M5J, there is no clear concentration in the 416 area code, other than M2L, in the Bayview and York Mills area.

One interesting thing is that this map doesn't have very much in common with the GTA impaired driving map. Accused street racers seem concentrated in one area, mostly, while impaired drivers are spread all over the GTA with higher numbers in more car-dependent areas.

Low-population L0L, along the 404 in Whitchurch-Stouffville, had only three suspensions during the period but is included on the map out of consistency.

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Information was obtained from the Ministry of Transportation under access-to-information legislation.