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Unhinged: Maybe Ending Cars And Coffee Events Could Be A Good Thing?


Unhinged: Maybe Ending Cars And Coffee Events Could Be A Good Thing?

19-year-old Tahj Turnley is going to remember the last Nashville Cars and Coffee for quite some time. That’s because he was filmed leaving the Thoroughbred 20 Theatre area after the show, coming out of a parking lot sideways in his Dodge Charger, nearly hitting bystanders before gathering the car up and hauling tail. The Franklin, Tennessee police got wind of the footage and arrested Turnley, charging him with Reckless Endangerment with a Deadly Weapon. He’ll face a magistrate on May 4th, 2017. Not a couple of weeks prior, an event at the Knoxville Cars and Coffee got the show permanently shut down. A Dodge Viper got loose and spun into the median, taking out trees and lots of bodywork (and maybe some suspension parts in the process.) Again, the car was out of control in danger-close proximity to bystanders, with people getting the hell out of the way of the roadster before the inevitable crunching of expensive parts started to happen.

And that’s not even the half of it. Incidents involving Ford Mustangs happen so often that it’s pretty much an Internet meme now. There was the guy in the BMW M4 who claimed that having misadjusted tire pressures caused him to lose control and jump the median. And if you want a time-killer, Google search “cars and coffee accidents” to see mangled Mustangs, crunched Camaros, and F’d up Ferraris. In the age of the cameraphone, YouTube and Reddit, there is no getting away with a stupid move at one of these events…if you screw up, the teeming hoards of bystanders will, unfailingly, catch your dumb ass on video and put you on the Internet for everybody to see. Great thought, isn’t it?

Look…I’m no saint behind the wheel. Not even close. But the amount of incidents involving Cars and Coffee events is so high, that I’m sitting at my computer, wondering if that kind of show setup is destined to fail. The Nashville event, which I’ve been to once, is massive. It’s a large mall parking lot and walking it took half the morning, rushing through, and I missed a good portion of it. It’s a younger crowd, it’s a higher-energy crowd, and there is usually a good mix of vehicles in attendance, ranging from hot rods and muscle cars to tuned-out machines, exotics and even the occasional supercar. On the surface, these larger events look like an automotive melting pot. So what is it that causes drivers to completely ditch their brain stem and wind up stuffed into a decorative hedge, or worse, the crowd?

Showing off is too simple of an answer. Having a little fun is too simple of an answer. Be it Pontiac or Porsche, McLaren or Mini, the driver is the final say for what the vehicle does. If a crowd of bystanders howling at you to come out of the parking lot with tires fully ablaze is all it takes for you to ignore safety and reasonability, maybe you should’ve kept your ass at home. You’d be spared the bills for body damage, visits by the authorities, and worst case scenario, you wouldn’t have someone’s death on your hands.

I wish I could expand my thoughts further, but then I’d be typing the phrase “****ing idiot” roughly three times a paragraph. I wish I had answers on how to fix this. Since my suggestions for an improved, and more difficult, driver’s licensing program will go unheeded, maybe for the sake of the automotive enthusiast, the Cars and Coffee meets need to die. The automotive community does not need to see yet another musclecar or exotic spinning out because the driver caved in and went numb upstairs. Our hobby suffers when the news learns of a pedestrian struck because someone had to leave some stripes near a busy parking lot instead of finding a deserted backroad or empty, unused parking lot.

Seven years ago, the idea of cars and coffee meant to me that about ten Subarus and one odd Chevy out descended upon a little coffee shack in Parkland. The cars were parked, and the people stood around, BS’d, drank coffee and ate food, and had a good time. Maybe the concept just outgrew itself and needs to be reined in. Actually, it does need to be reined in, before yet another moron with a heavy foot and little sense makes the rounds on the Internet.

 


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19 thoughts on “Unhinged: Maybe Ending Cars And Coffee Events Could Be A Good Thing?

  1. Singapore Hot Rod

    my Dad would always shake his head when folks left out of car shows doing burn outs. He thought it was much more classy to drive away under control and let the crowd wonder what the car could actually do.

    My Dad’s a smart guy.

    But damn I’ll admit watching these morons sure makes me laugh! Not cool when they hurt someone or bust up someone else’s car.

  2. doug gregory

    Quite possibly one of my favorite reads on here. Results from a cars-n-coffee are about as predictable as a no-prep race.

  3. Larry

    Ya need to have rules, I like Goodguy\’s rules. Nothing newer than 1978. If I want to see a bunch of late model stuff I\’ll go to a used car lot. If I want to see a bunch of in progress work I\’ll go to the salvage yard.

    1. Jim

      Larry, I’d much rather check out a ’87 Buick Grand National or ’93 Mustang Cobra than a 1978 Dodge Aspen or 77 Chevy Malibu. Maybe a few antique ( 25 years or older ) meets would be cool occasionally though.

  4. jerry z

    I’ve been to many cruise nights but never a cars and coffee event. It doen’t matter if its day or night, egos surface when spectators are involved and seen some stupid stunts happen. At one cruise, people were hanging out at the exit and people wete leaving with a heavy foot. One idiot left doing a burnout, lost control and hit a car in the next lane. Needless to say, the cruise was shut down.

  5. Davey

    Our Sunday Cruise night during the summer has been going on for years. For the most part it’s an orderly gathering with very few displays of stupidity. But there are times this happens. The Police have no issue with the event itself and even stop in and have a hot dog and provide a friendly presence. (All good). Other times they sit down the street and wait for the few idiots who have to show off. It’s funny how many people think the police lying in wait is wrong and a waste of time and resources. Somehow they seem to forget why the Police are there and the fact that idiots showing off are a danger to themselves and others.

  6. BlownMerc

    So much truth to this! I am a regular attendee at Mustang Week in South Carolina. Every year there has been at least one person lose control and end up in oncoming traffic or in the crowd. I don’t understand the need to take a risk of hurting other people just to show off. 99% percent of the time you have a driver that is driving a car they cannot handle and have no business trying to play Ricky the Racecar Driver. Moron’s are going to shut down all the fun events because of their actions. Best article you have written Bryan.

  7. Loren

    Old wisdom was that the higher the traction a tire was capable of, the narrower the threshold area between slipping and gripping, and tires these days are high traction. Most of the videos I see seem to show high-powered cars spinning the tires then one side hooking slightly before the other one due to uneven conditions etc. and the amateur-but-well-money’d driver being unprepared. Horribly unprepared, sometimes.

    Since we know spectators are often dumber than drivers they are not going to help here, and there are always the dopey drivers doing their thing. It wouldn’t hurt for a cop to get his butt out of the donut shop for an hour and be present doing his paperwork or whatever, when I think of the stupid stuff I’ve been cited for over the years while genuinely dangerous behavior is allowed to occur in known concentrated spots, I have to wonder why a guy can’t just do a job as he’s paid for.

    1. Dog

      A cops job is to be sitting at a site that nothing illegal should be going on? I guess they should be stationed everywhere between your house and the meet just to make sure you don\’t speed?

  8. Chevy Hatin' Mad Geordie

    Take one cup of coffee, add four measures of Jim Beam, two fluid ounces of methamphetamine and two drops of liquid LSD. Ingest six cups and then get into your car and try and drive it away.

    Kerrrrrash – it works every time!

  9. BigDogSS

    For those who don’t know (Larry), the very first “Cars & Coffee” event started out in Irvine, CA, mostly made up of late-model sports cars and exotics, but everything shows up. Pretty cool.

  10. BigDogSS

    What the “organizers” need to do is to not allow a crowd to gather on the street to egg-on this behavior.

  11. Anthony

    Its always the same story. You get a few guys that work hard to organize and put it on then one or two punkass’ to ruin it for everybody. The regular attendees should police it as well

  12. john t

    I’m in Australia and from what I’ve seen this just isn’t an issue here.. we have plenty of cruise night type events and, of all of them , the coffee and cars ones seem to be the most restrained…I don’t recall ever seeing anyone lose control (but we do get the odd burnout type stuff leaving shows). Cops are more often than not on hand and, in any case, once you’re out of the carpark or whatever normal road rules apply. Maybe its our very strict `hoon laws’ that can see your pride and joy get crushed that helps keep everyone under control?

  13. C.M. Bendig

    Something similar killed our local weekend car show, and killed the business that was dependent on it. On the 1990’s a old east coast style dinner appearing in the shopping center (strip mall) at the corner of Brandt Pike & Fishburg Rd, Friday Nights then Saturday nights turned in to a car show with the local oldies station doing live broadcasts. 1,000 to 1,500 cars would show up. People came from Detroit & Indy, Cincinnati and Pittsburg,.

    People started setting up street races.. going down to the local street racer area and running during evening hours not after midnight. Then you had the cars and coffee exit types and those doing big power burns in the driving isles of the parking lot. 10+ year old parking lot asphalt does not take well to repeated burn outs in an area, and doing it with people walking about.

    That lead to a petition being signed by against the show. The dinner lasted maybe a year after the show was shut down. Eventually the dinner was sold off and loaded out of the strip mall.

    Maybe the answer is to hold these events at a Drag Strip. Then when you go to leave you make a pass down the strip in front of a people in the stands.

  14. kiwi1

    people need to learn restrain, as another person said with the power and traction cars have now unskilled drivers get caught off guard and have no idea how to react, maybe part of buying these cars people have to pass an advanced driving school, or just to grow up and leave the skids for the track instead of ruining it for others and the organizers

  15. Rallyace

    We have a local weekly cruise-in and at the end there are the usual idiots doing burnouts. The organizer and the State Police had a clever solution. They set up a speed trap about a half a mile from the exit of the cruise-in. The idiots did their burnouts going the other way and just over the bridge in the next county was the real trap. They got about a dozen for unsafe starts, equipment violations, and a host of other issues. Karma is a bitch 🙂

  16. Dennis

    The funny thing is the fast food restaurants will kill a million times more people than these events could ever manage. They just play the long game. 🙂

    Seriously, just have a couple patrol cars in prominent positions and it should take care of itself.

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