12 Seconds to Live : The Time It Takes to Race Down a Street Can Bring Elation, a Ticket--or Death

Word on the street gets out fast, or not at all.

While Anthony Galati lay semiconscious at St. Joseph Medical Center with severe head injuries two weeks ago, it was business as usual in the parking lot of a Sunland convenience store.

As they do most Tuesday nights, hundreds of street racers and their followers gathered to view one another’s high-tech wonders, kibitz, bet and choose a more-or-less empty boulevard for the evening’s contests--bouts in which cars that gobble a blend of nitrous oxide and aviation fuel roar down a quarter-mile of asphalt in less than 12 seconds.

The fact that Galati, 25, a former street racer and father of an 8-month-old son, had almost died in a racing-related accident May 17 did not thin the crowd. The accident, at Los Angeles Valley College in Van Nuys, occurred while he was filming a public-service announcement on the perils of street racing. But no race has ever been called off because of tragic irony.

Besides, efforts by police, citizens groups and well-intended reformers to keep racers off San Fernando Valley streets have almost always flopped.

Heeding complaints about the distance of the nearest drag strip--about an hour away in Palmdale--state officials in 1983 earmarked almost $300,000 for construction of a Valley drag strip.

Population pressure and soaring land prices have closed half a dozen Los Angeles drag strips since the ‘60s. The Valley proposal was never to bear fruit; fierce opposition in every neighborhood with an available parcel of land squelched it.

Los Angeles police occasionally impound vehicles, give citations for improper registration and equipment violations and make misdemeanor arrests for participating in speed contests.

A detail from the northeast Valley’s Foothill Division has “engaged” street racers each weekend since the beginning of April, but Capt. William Pruitt acknowledges that enforcement is hit-or-miss, depending on available manpower.

Occasionally, police will confront racers before their contests, frisking them for weapons, checking registrations and, in other ways, discouraging them from gathering.

“Sometimes we’ll play cat-and-mouse with them all night,” Pruitt said. “It’s been a problem in the Valley for 30 years, and it hasn’t gotten any better.”

A Los Angeles police racing team also tries to convert street racers to strip racers with a souped-up Chevy Camaro that resembles a squad car. But despite the fancy public relations, illegal street racing persists, as much a part of Valley heritage as backyard fruit trees.

“It’s a tradition,” said Dave Prey, a veteran racer and manager of the Service Center in Sepulveda, a purveyor of custom-car accessories and speed equipment since 1960. “It’s still the same old, same old, day in and day out, but the problem is getting much worse. Back in the ‘60s, there were only a couple of dozen fast cars in the Valley. Now there are hundreds.”

Prey, who helped Galati design the car that crashed during the filming, should know. For 18 years, he’s been selling high-performance cams, carburetion systems, custom wheels and the like. “We’re like a gun shop,” he said. “What they do with the parts is at their own discretion.”

One thing they do if they’re lucky is make money. High-stakes betting--as much as $5,000 on a single race, according to Prey--fuels the men whipping down Valley streets and inflames the hundreds of spectators on the sidelines.

The police are as concerned about those spectators as they are about the drivers. Although police keep no statistics on street-racing injuries or deaths, fatalities have occurred and will occur again as unsupervised crowds spill into the paths of speeding cars.

“This is not an ‘American Graffiti’-type situation,” said Police Lt. Alan Kerstein, watch commander of the Valley Traffic Division.

Cordon Off Streets

Racers try to stay a step ahead of the law by listening to police monitors, posting lookouts and keeping in touch with one another via two-way radio, Kerstein said. They cordon off their favorite streets, such as a stretch of San Fernando Road at the Golden State Freeway in Sylmar, with cars and pickups, and tend not to run more than five or six quarter-mile races before moving on.

The cars, whose improvements can easily cost more than $10,000, are no ordinary family runabouts. Many are geared for rapid acceleration to more than 100 m.p.h. but not for prolonged freeway cruising at the speed limit. Fiberglass fenders and hoods lighten the front end. Wide rear tires provide the traction needed by the cars, whose engines can generate 400 or more horsepower.

Some operate on the nitrous oxide mixture, which burns more rapidly than gasoline, boosting horsepower, speed and danger to drivers and onlookers.

That’s why Tony De Santo, a former racer and a 29-year-old Valley College film student, focused on street racing for his class project.

“I’ve been there,” he said. “And the problem is escalating.”

De Santo’s 60-second spot was a morality tale about the dangers of street racing. His old friend, Galati, played a teen-ager who runs over his younger brother during a street race.

Although Galati was traveling about 40 m.p.h. during the filming, his Camaro surged, went out of control and crashed into De Santo’s parked truck. Police are investigating the cause of the accident.

Galati’s friends, who consider him a top-notch driver, assume it was a mechanical malfunction. Galati, who suffered massive head injuries, was airlifted to St. Joseph, where he remained hospitalized for two weeks until his release Friday.

“Life is too precious a gift to take for granted, like the special relationship between two brothers,” the narrator of the film was to say. “In racing, you have two choices, but only one right one--you decide.”

The message might not have struck the entire fraternity of street racers, but it hit at least one of them hard.

Gary Stouffer, a longtime racing friend of Galati who had been keeping a vigil at his bedside while he was hospitalized, made a vow.

“I’ve flat-out stopped,” said Stouffer, who was best man at Galati’s wedding. “I hadn’t been doing it as much anyway. It’s just too dangerous. Most of the people out there these days are just smoking their dope and partying anyway. Those are the guys you see doing doughnuts in the middle of the street.”

But the Palmdale drag strip, far as it may be, still beckons. Stouffer said his 1967 Nova Super Sport can hit 132 m.p.h., completing the quarter-mile in 10 seconds. He is not about to abandon it, any more than he thinks Galati will when he recovers.

“Racing is his life,” he said, pointing out that Galati’s friends are collecting money to help him pay for a new car. “It’s in his blood.”