Nearly 200 roadside spectators found out about a drag-racing crackdown the hard way when Pinellas deputies rounded them up and wrote each and every one of them a ticket. Deputies had staked out the semiregular Saturday night races on Fourth Street N just south of the Howard Frankland Bridge. Deputies didn't chase down the racers, figuring that a pursuit might put bystanders in danger. Greg Tita said. We've chased them from the Courtney Campbell Causeway to the Gandy Bridge to the Howard Frankland to Fourth.
Street racing has a long and occasionally tragic history in the Tampa Bay area.
In July 1997, a car racing on U.S. 41 in Inverness hit a pickup head-on, killing both drivers. Five years ago in St. Petersburg, a drag-racing Chevy hit a school bus, injuring three people. In 1989 in Temple Terrace, two racing cars broadsided a third car, killing two teenage girls. But the police see it as insanely unsafe, especially with a healthy crowd gathered to watch. The Sheriff's Office says it was responding to complaints about the dragging on Fourth Street N near the last U-turn before Tampa.